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UWSA Marketing Strategy Report
UWSA Marketing Strategy Report
Contents
Foreword 01 The UWSA tactical marketing strategy
- introduction - whats in a title? - objectives
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UWSA branding adjustments Improving your awareness & visibility Future communication campaigns
- focus on first year students - blue out! - voting & elections - event management & promotion - improve online presence - unified branding
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Foreword
For the future, the UWSAs marketing, needs to expand always, in all ways.
Dear Colleague, Welcome to OutBRANDish Consulting Groups first UWSA marketing strategy. Addressing areas such as firm strategy and operations, idea generation, due diligence and future resource acquisition. Combining wold-class capabilities with dynamic marketing expertise, our unique marketing strategies deliver customized insights to the UWSA. In the following pages, you will find several integrated topics that describe what is happening today at the University of Windsor as it pertains to the UWSAs operations, with a particular focus on awareness. We begin with a brief change in the way information must be disseminated from the UWSA in the future if it hopes to achieve maximum effectiveness for its efforts, we examine what needs to be tweaked in the current marketing direction. From there, we quickly shift to assess our recommendations for future campaigns that achieve results in the categories the UWSA values. We touch on opportunities the UWSA has available presently and the headwinds the UWSA will encounter in the next 12 months and beyond. We make no claims to be seers; our crystal ball is nearly as cloudy as yours in many respects. We do bring the facts to the table in classic OutBRANDish fashion and integrate them with our quadrigeminal years of experience working in the business and marketing space to characterize the environment all firms must navigate - not just to survive, but to thrive. We conclude by offering some insights into taking the strategy into the future and measuring its success. Its often said where you stand depends upon where you sit. If nothing else, the processes, and rules of the past may no longer apply to building a successful student alliance for the future. Through a co-ordinated effort, we can work together to market the UWSA and make the most of its opportunities - wherever they are!
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Its about awareness, students need to know who we are and what we do.
Andre Capaldi President, UWSA
Whats in a title?
Change the spokes not the wheel is a reference to the proclivity of incoming executives to reinvent the wheel as it were, every term and impart their own strategies, and initiatives instead of continuing existing strategies and adjusting to fit the vision and direction of a new organisation.
Objectives
OutBRANDish Consulting has recognized that the main aim of this strategy is to get all of the key stakeholders in UWSA to speak with a single compelling voice across campus. This will help position the UWSA where it needs to be as the representatives of an appreciative and knowledgable student body. To meet this vision it is imperative the UWSA focus on improving student awareness about the alliance including; what services they provide to the student body. We also realize that the UWSA could benefit with an increase in student involvement for the different events that they execute. Most of the student body does not know or fully understand what the UWSA stands for. The UWSAs struggle to increase student involvement with events is based on the lack of knowledge students have about the alliance and the little effort spent to market the events. Improving the student body awareness for the UWSA is a critical objective to consider. As a consulting group, we came up with various goals and objectives that fall into three key targets we wished to accomplish while working for the UWSA. The three key targets that underpin these aims: Adjust and reposition UWSA branding to increase awareness and effectiveness of future information dissemination. Improve the UWSAs existing initiatives and campaigns
Create several lucrative future campaigns that leverage the UWSAs key strengths. From these three broader targets, we have outlined and discussed five important goals and objectives for the UWSA including: improving their online presence creating a unified brand focusing on first year students how to manage and promote events how to increase awareness for elections and increase voter turnout. The main objective of these recommendations are to increase visibility across campus, while increasing knowledge about what the alliance does and how to better represent and promote the services and benefits that the UWSA provides to students.
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Every advertisement should be thought of as a contribution to the complex symbol which is the brand image. David Ogilvy
Author; Confessions of an Advertising man
Unied branding
In past years the UWSA has struggled to represent themselves as a unified brand. This may have caused confusion among many students on campus, thus creating a unified brand among all mediums will create a strong recognizable image. The UWSA has already realized this issue and has already started working to fix it. This is apparent through their rebranding efforts in 2008 that reconfigured and updated the UWSAs logo. OutBRANDish Consulting has realized that even though the UWSA is working on this problem, we still have some ideas that would be advisable to consider. By creating a consistent logo and aggressively branding it, students will be able to better recognize the UWSA. The aggressive branding with a consistent logo for
all sponsored events will also help with recognition of all events performed by the UWSA. This branding should also be consistent with the services they offer. Our consultants believe that the UWSA needs to clarify titles and decrease acronyms for executive position titles and campus events. Confusion is increased when it comes to council elections when acronyms are used for certain positions, as well as; students are unaware of what specific positions actually manage and perform. Often this confusion leads to decreased student enthusiasm, creating a deficiency in voting. It would be advisable to have this phenomenon communicated throughout the alliance and make it aware to candidates who are campaigning. Another suggestion is to have the UWSA create signs that can be placed all over campus on a permanent basis. Not only would the signs create a more colourful campus environment, but also create student pride and belonging. These permanent UWSA insignias should be placed both outside and inside to allow for greater exposure. The UWSA should look at placing banners in a few buildings across campus if plausible. By enhancing the
signs and banners throughout campus, it would create a constant reminder to students about the UWSA, this allows for students to see mnemonically what services they provide and the events the UWSA hosts or sponsors. Our last suggestion with branding is for the UWSA to create more memorabilia with their logo a fixed to lavish onto students. This would have to be reflexively worked into the budget, or have surplus funds allocated. The merchandise can include anything from clothing to school supplies, such as pens, notebooks, sticky notes and rulers. The memorabilia would be objects that are commonly used during daily activities; consequently, students will be more exposed to the UWSAs logo and would be more inclined to remember or learn about the alliance.
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Ensure to reply to any posts on the event page and respond to RSVPs whenever applicable, Periodically comment on your own wall about the event to reduce the possibility of information becoming stagnant, Upload photos/videos to give an avenue for more buzz through photo/video comments, shares and Likes, Make sure to continuously send out invites, and provide a clear gateway to current attendees; personal messages/ inboxes, The constant need to send out reminders, especially in the last few days leading up to the event, Event buzz can be paired with the @uwsawindsor Twitter account by tweeting about events, there is an option available to users of both to link them; thus posts on one are replicated on the other. Furthermore, to further push the social networking movement, the UWSA should create Share buttons on their website. Inputting Like and Share buttons on a webpage is completely free, and is encouraged by Facebook themselves. Facebook provides a description on how to input these buttons on a webpage at the following link: http://developers.facebook.com/ docs/reference/plugins/like/.
This is a simple mechanism that can greatly aid in advertising for events as well as information and awareness broadcasting. Although social media is a major part of event promotion, the UWSA should not focus solely on the use of social networks to promote school events. Below are some simple recommendations on how to increase the effectiveness of the already established event promotion techniques currently used by the UWSA. It is advised that attention be given to create creative headlines and subject titles for the UWSA emails and for all poster ads. Especially with emails, a creative headline will entice the student to open the email rather than just skipping by it or deleting it, as this is often the case with most students. In addition to creative headlines and subject titles, the incentive for attending the event should be emphasized to provide insight on the benefit of attending to the students deliberating whether or not to attend. To continue with the issue of emails, the sender should be UWSA itself, seeing the UWSA name in the dispatchers name slot would create more of an initiative for a student to read the emails. The proclivity for the president and executives to only serve for one term (one year) this can confuse students as to who is emailing them, and thus, they will just delete the email without hesitation. When it comes to poster ads, efforts need to be directed towards better poster placement if possible. The UWSA print ads need to be isolated from the clutter in order to catch students attention. We conducted a study with a small sample group of students; we found that 98% of our focus group was unaware of the fliers and print ads that were out there for
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the U-pass and for the AGM. They admitted that when there are fliers that are cluttered together on popular cork boards that they just walk by and give no attention to the posters or other ads. This should be a concern, especially considering the amount of the yearly UWSA budget that is allocated towards printing expenses. One possible solution would be to create spaces where only UWSA ads can be presented, or to place the poster ads in unconventional places isolated from other nonrelated ads. Moreover, it would be advised to attempt to establish an arrangement to encourage RAs to inform their students of events as they are impending, as well as serve as the key disseminator of all pertinent UWSA initiatives to their students. To compliment this, it is advised that fliers be distributed in residences and major areas for certain events of significance. When focusing on the AGM and how to better increase student attendance and participation we recommend that the UWSA take extra measurements to accommodate students wants and needs. Everybody loves to enjoy food and beverages at an event, thus, the UWSA should allot a certain amount of money for these extended services. Another recommendation for the Annual General Meeting is the time and date of the event itself. Thursday evening from 4-7pm is damaging to the total student attendance. Often, students have already left the campus area and have their minds set on the weekend due to the small amount of classes on Fridays. Holding the meeting Tuesday, midweek during the day is a much better time for a greater attendance of students and involvement, this is a day when the students brains are clear and ready for action.
With the product launch of the University of Windsor mobile application on Campus Technology Day May 17th the UWSA should work closely with this mobile application. What we advise the UWSA to do is ensure that events will be advertised and information about the events be available through the application. Events should be set out in a calendar for student access within the application, and reminders activated via students mobile devices.
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day at residences across campus. The UWSA should have booths set up with representatives as well as useful memorabilia to give away in individual freshman welcome packs. These representatives would be able to provide information to parents and students about their services and events offered each year, as well as answering any questions that the students or parents may have. During the school year, parents are going to be the ones who are likely to remember what influence the UWSA provides to help the students, thus giving them the information directly will be of significant advantage for the UWSAs future development. Similar to Head Start, on move in day the UWSA should have a few booths set up in high traffic areas across campus. Such areas include; the St. Denis Centre, CAW Student Centre and Toldo Health Education Centre. The main booth should be set up just outside of the Bookstore, since most students will look to purchase their textbooks, school apparel and school supplies. This is a great location for traffic. The UWSA should look at keeping the booth at the bookstore periodically through Frosh Week since all students will need to buy their books
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within the first few weeks of school. By having the booth at the Bookstore, the UWSA can talk about their services to new students as well as year twos and up. These booths will help the UWSA refresh more senior students on their services. On top of having representatives at campus residences and the Bookstore, the UWSA should look at getting RAs and WRIC representatives involved with them, so they can also advocate for the UWSA. RAs help first year students immensely, so having them more involved with the UWSA would be an excellent asset in grossing more student involvement in events.
positions. The process of nominations and elections are a stressful few weeks for some individuals, they want to have their voice heard and make a difference. To make this dream a reality the student body must vote for whom they deem worthy or fit to be elected into each contested position. In past years, the UWSA total student body voting has been varying levels of extreme lows in proportion to the size of the University of Windsor. 2012 voting had reached an all-time high this year, and much of that was attributed to OutBRANDish Consultings advertising efforts. This disproved any arguable effectiveness of current or past methods. The UWSA would find it in their best interest to create a greater awareness on campus of the elections and voting process, as well as what one can do to make a difference. Thus, creating more awareness about the elections along with making the process more streamlined and convenient should be the UWSAs primary concern. There are reasons to believe that OutBRANDish Consulting can create a greater want for the student body to vote for nominees by marketing the campaign with more ferocity and offering updated convenient ways to vote and discover nominee information. Within the following we will discuss some actions that should be taken into consideration in order to help create habitual voters. The first main issue is awareness on campus when it comes to elections. Many methods of reaching students havent been working as intended. For example, by holding student focus groups we were able to identify that while campaign posters have made some students aware of elections, it does not prompt positive action for them to vote. Also, an overwhelming amount of students suggested that the voting campaigning process be redesigned as they cannot see through the clutter and identify specific
Blue Out!
When evaluating the school spirit at other Ontario Universities, OutBRANDish finds that among other things the evidence of their school spirit is in their attire. OutBRANDish proposes the UWSA provide all incoming students with an article of clothing in the University of Windsor colours and branded with the UWSA logo as well as an encouraging Like button adorned on the rear; this satisfies three valuable targets the UWSA is aiming towards, school spirit, awareness and recognition, and positively driving social media membership. The UWSA already provides apparel free of charge to students during welcome week for events like Shinerama. The UWSA can either reallocate those funds to this initiative or divert some of the $20,000 surplus that is not uncommon at fiscal year end.
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candidates. The first main attribute that we would like to see implemented would be to have a page on the UWSA website, as well as the voting webpage, provide job description for each council position. Currently students are unaware of what each position entails because there is very little information externally provided regarding positional functions. Also, it is advised to avoid the use of a lot of acronyms to decrease confusion as students will know what each position entitles. This would allow for the majority of the student body to be able to access the information as well as incline them to potentially run themselves. Furthermore, on the UWSA website, Facebook page, and on the voting webpage, individual candidate platforms should be summarized and presented. This can be done through creating short standardized videos of each candidate presenting their platform. These videos can be uploaded on Facebook and be shared by thousands of students. If the videos are standardized this will eliminate bias, as often students base voting on perceptual features of posters and other signage, not based on specific positions and platforms. These testimonies would include the nominees intention for the role they are running for, as well as any speeches that they would like the students to hear, this would allow for the nominees to express themselves and give each candidate a fair chance against opponents. Once the videos are recorded and posted online, each nominee should also do a write up of their thoughts, posted beside their video. This will allow for students to download the word document to see the candidates personalized summary page. Creating these candidate videos as well as a summary page of each will allow for the student body to be more involved which will create a greater need to take part in voting and elective actions.
Moreover, it is advised that on the online voting webpage short summaries should be provided that outline the basic platforms of each candidate. This will allow a student to make an informed vote even in unfamiliar circumstances. These summaries should also be provided at the on campus polling stations, to inform those not voting online. The next step in the marketing campaign would be to schedule class presentations to inform students about the upcoming elections and voting possibilities. During these presentations the UWSA representatives should do a quick run-through of where and how to vote for nominees. Online or offline, students should know what their resources are and the methods in which they can express themselves. With the addition of these new innovative election ideas, the UWSA should focus and advertise the complete convenience of voting and the ability to vote online in the comforts of your own home. With past voting experiences, the University had to set up multiple locations where students could go to vote. The voting turnout has steadily increased since 2005, this past year there was a huge jump in student voters due to increased involvement to market the elections and create a greater awareness. A main aspect of this would be through social media. If these efforts were to be continuously imitated in years to come, the UWSA could have a great spike in their voter turnout. The final phase to implement when creating greater awareness for the elections is to craft more visuals around campus. By printing and posting election posters in faculty buildings across campus. Students need to see posters that are eye catching and create a want to vote for a particular candidate.
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OutBRANDish allocated the following funds to our completed initiatives: Social networking was all free sweat equity Printing costs - $ 240 total In terms of budgeting, we were assigned no determinant budget, but were advised by Andre to keep in mind it is a student run organization with limitations. As far as costs, OutBRANDish is fortunate that the majority of our advertising was via social media, which carries no cost beyond sweat equity. Thus, our costs were strictly related to printing costs which only totaled $240.00. Through our campaign we were able to create definite impact for little cost, well within the perceived budget. OutBRANDish has researched the costs associated with our recommendations herein and present them as follows: Blueout Initiative Roughly $6000 per 1000 t-shirts. Pre-existing vendor relations may lessen our cost estimate Permanent signs dependent on existing partnership with Superior Signs And More Increase in advertising budget with 20% increase = $ 1136 Social media efforts - Free Voting videos and standardization - Free UWSA memorabilia - $ 4040 for 2000 notepads and 2000 pens with Festival Promotions partnership Presentations and UWSA booths Volunteer - Free Facebook event pages - Free Food for AGM - $ 200 Student Council incentives reallocation of existing funds as well as an addition of minimum $ 4000 Wifi login page Strategic Partnership dependent on negotiations with University Total = $ 15, 376 (with only 1000 shirts and no monetary value for permanent signage)
Promotions team
In addition to elected student members and staff promoting UWSA services and events, a dedicated group of students should be recruited to solely serve as a promotions and marketing team. This team should consist of energetic students who have experience promoting events and able to talk to students comfortably. Any campaign the UWSA holds should be executed through the outreach by this team and supplemented by elected student members.
UWSA presence
To promote the existence of the UWSA, recommendations to increase the visibility include including signage in the student centre commons by way of a large vertical banner with the website URL and the location of the offices. It is OutBRANDishs findings that indicate as author Malcolm Gladwell concurs the golden box technique; insists that for an advertisement to be successful it must not only be of relevance to the viewer but it must provide them with direction - hours of operation and a simple located on the second floor corridor will spell the difference between where is that? and an increase flow of incoming students to the UWSA offices. UWSA executives and elected members should strive to attend all UWSA sponsored events and represent the organisation at University of Windsor sponsored events. To increase the presence in the University of Windsor community and the City of Windsor, press conferences should be held for major announcements and campaigns such as the annual general meeting and the election results of the new executives.
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When advertising 1 + 1 has to equal 15. The result has to be greater than the sum of its parts. Vincent Georgie
Assistant Professor, Odette School of Business
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Key takeaways
If the UWSA aspires to achieve winning results they need a clearly differentiated strategy of past administrations and a focused blueprint for delivering positive and lasting impressions. By way of clever advertising positioning and possible co-advertising partnerships with the University of Windsor, there is a substantial awareness opportunity to be had by occupying a previously barren but frequented space by the majority of the Universitys Wi-Fi users. To limit confusion, especially during election time, limit acronyms. Leverage the popularity of Facebook to your advantage with strategic and meaningful posts, it is used by nearly all but posts need to be meaningful lest they blend in, and become advertising noise. Convert them promptly, if you build brand awareness early on in a students University career and educate their parents on your services, the prospect they will forget diminishes. Hire a marketing coordinator that possesses both knowledge of marketing, advertising and promotion and has a grasp of the key concepts of the photoshop suite.
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Disclosures
OutBRANDish Consulting Group was commissioned by the UWSA and the Odette School of Business to develop a tactical marketing strategy. The majority of the students interviewed by OutBRANDish Consulting were provided and selected by OutBRANDish Consulting. The UWSA did not participate in the interviews, and was not involved in the
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Whereas every effort has been made to ensure that the information given in this document is accurate, neither OutBRANDish Consulting Group or the Odette School of Business accept liability for any errors, omissions or misleading statements, and no warranty is given or responsibility accepted as to the standing of any individual, rm, company or other organisation mentioned. The paper in this document is made from 50 per cent recycled waste pulp with 50 per cent pulp from well-managed forests. This is a combination of Totally Chlorine Free and Elemental Chlorine Free. Published April 2012 by OutBRANDish Consulting Group Copyright OutBrandish Consulting Group