By Christiana SchmitzThe Daily Northwestern
Sadat Brandon Burns smiled and shrugged, summing up his marketing strategy in one short, simple sentence.
“It’s the easiest 50 bucks you’ll ever make,” he said.
Burns, Communications ’05, works for Curiosity Coursepacks, a printing company founded by a pair of recent NU graduates that hope to one day eliminate the cost of coursepacks for college students.
Curiosity is offering $50 to NU students who persuade their professors to print their coursepacks through the company.
Profits from a discreet advertising space in the back of the coursepacks would keep down their price, Burns said.
“Some people look at advertising as a very bad thing,” he said, “but advertising pays for things that you don’t want to pay for.”
Burns cited the Internet as an example.
“There’s a need for cheap, relatively inexpensive, legal coursepacks,” said Aaron Szerlip, co-founder and vice president of the Curiosity Coursepacks. The company is his answer.
“The longterm goal of the program is to eventually give away coursepacks for free,” Szerlip said. As of now, Curiosity still charges for its product.
Szerlip, McCormick ’06, co-founded the company in 2004 with Dan Meisner, Communication ’05. For five quarters, the two have been printing coursepacks for a small number of NU professors.
This year their coursepacks are available at Northwestern through Beck’s Bookstore, 716 Clark St., and also at the University of Pennsylvania.
“Print shops are taking advantage of professors and students alike,” Szerlip said.
That’s how the idea began.
None of the professors interviewed said they would be opposed to seeing advertising in their course materials if it meant slashing their costs.
Prof. Nicola Beisel had never heard of the company before but said that she would be happy to look over the information if they were to send it to her.
“I’m somewhat indifferent about who I get my coursepacks from,” she said.
Prof. Christine Bell has been Curiosity’s biggest account at NU. Bell said she has no complaints about Curiosity.
According to Szerlip, this is the first time Curiosity has targeted students with an advertising campaign. It hired the campus student group AdShop to help give the idea a push.
This past week there were flyers around campus and tables set up at Norris urging students to join the company’s sales team.
Two hundred students signed up in three days, Szerlip said.
“The response has been good,” he said. “We’ve met our goal of how many students we wanted to sign up.”
While Weinberg and Music Junior Sara Laupp said she probably wouldn’t be willing to pitch the idea to her professor, she’s not opposed to their advertising plan.
“I don’t see why it would be a bad idea,” said Sara Laupp, “I mean, it’s free.”
Reach Christiana Schmitz at [email protected].
