PICK SUCCESS CAMPAIGN
During my last semester on campus, I took Communication Campaigns - the capstone class needed to graduate from the public relations discipline. Communication Campaigns challenges you to test out everything you've learned so far by assigning you and your team members to a real-life client who is in need of a PR campaign. After a lot of hard work and collaboration, I can definitively say that this course was one of the most rewarding experiences of my college career.
Our Assignment
Our team, DASH Group, was paired up with the UNC Charlotte Dean of Students' Office - specifically the Office of Student Conduct and Academic Integrity (SCAI) - to help promote recent changes to the Code of Academic Integrity, as well as academic resources to students and faculty members. DASH Group quickly settled on the slogan "Pick Success with the Code of Academic Integrity," and set out to create a campaign that was informative, proactive and felt true to UNC Charlotte's brand identity.
Program Book
Starting from the first day of Communication Campaigns, we were given short assignments each week that eventually became our long, intricate program book. The pacing made it much easier to understand each campaign component's significance, and I am certain that I can now complete this planning in a much shorter amount of time. The program book contains our opportunity statement and goal; research results; target audiences; campaign objectives; message, strategies and tactics; proposed budget; proposed timeline; evaluation; and appendix.
Tactics
Although our tactics are all located within the program book, I wanted to showcase them here as well, as they are the biggest visual aspect of the campaign. When creating these tactics, we took into account how and where our target audiences typically learned information on campus.
From the beginning, DASH Group knew that the campaign needed to represent the university above all. We decided to only use colors found in UNC Charlotte's brand guide for all our materials. DASH Group then chose a slogan and designed a logo that would immediately make audiences think of one of the university's symbols: the pickaxe.
To bridge the gap between academic resources and incoming students, DASH Group photographed several student leaders and asked them about what tools they had used in the past. These reviews from more experienced students lend to the credibility of the resources, the office and the campaign itself.
The Office of Enrollment Communications oversees 12 Social Media Ambassadors (SMAs) who represent and promote UNC Charlotte via Twitter DASH Group proposed a collaborative campaign with the SMAs to share information on university resources, and created a guide to sent to the SMA team to inspire original tweets.
These small resource cards were designed to be passed out at student orientation sessions (SOAR) along with giveaways such as tote bags, buttons, staplers and calculators. With this tactic, DASH Group aimed to encourage students and parents to take a proactive stance and seek out help before it became necessary.
Early on in the planning stage, DASH Group conducted both a focus group and observational study on first-year students. This research revealed that freshmen pay close attention to posters hung up across campus, especially in residence halls. DASH Group designed this poster to be eye-catching and included QR codes to relevant links to send our audience straight to the resource.
In the interest of creating another tactic that would be a quick reminder to students to check out resources on campus, DASH Group designed a yard sign that could be placed near high-traffic areas on campus, such as the union, the library and large academic buildings.
DASH Group believed that the Pick Success campaign should be represented on SCAI's new website. The group made mock-ups of what a landing page for resources would look like and determined where on the new website these pages could exist.
All academic advisors are required to send notices via email to students who are doing poorly in one or more of their classes. DASH Group suggested that fact sheets get sent along with those emails to show students that help is not hard to find. These fact sheets contain more information than other tactics, so that students can pinpoint exactly what type of support they need.
Although the new settlement form process had been in place for a while prior to planning this campaign, many faculty members were having difficulty following it. DASH Group decided to film a video of our client explaining the process, step by step. This video was intended to be shown at department meetings, but can also be used by the client to help faculty members who make mistakes down the line.
SCAI sends out an academic newsletter with statistics and suggestions to faculty members on a quarterly basis. DASH Group updated the template to match the rest of the campaign and wrote copy for the Fall 2019 edition that highlighted the student campaign. We also embedded the instructional video to the left in case faculty members hadn't gotten the chance to watch it yet.
DASH Group thought it was important to be transparent with faculty members about the updates to the Code of Academic Integrity. We asked the client for specific information on the changes, and listed it all on a document that was to be sent out with the faculty newsletter.
The initial plan was to present the program book and campaign to our client in person. DASH Group planned to add a tactile component to the presentation in the form of a Wild West board game. With each new section, the client would draw a card and continue on their journey until they reached the gold mine, where they would "pick for success." Unfortunately, in the aftermath of April 30, we were unable to present our campaign in person.