This past fall, I was hired by Allen Hall Advertising, the University of Oregon’s student-run, full service ad agency. Still very wet behind the ears, I became the account director for the U of O Alumni Association account. The UOAA wanted to create a group that unified all students, provided networking and career mentoring, hosted fun events and funneled students into the Alumni Assn. post grad.
The first step was to name and brand the group. Having absolutely no experience with things like this, I definitely struggled. All of our ideas had to be approved by a 30-member executive board made up of students. Our team came up with a short list of names, I pitched them to the board and had them absolutely ripped apart. I had exactly the same problem when I pitched the logo and t-shirt designs that our team came up with. Getting that many people to agree on a name and artwork to support the name was literally impossible and horribly frustrating, but in the end we came up with work that they approved.
The next step was to plan a strategic release for the group. After we struggled with the naming and branding phase, the faculty advisor was ready to give the account to someone else. Luckily, we caught wind of this early and I came up with a plan. There was already a long list of student groups on campus, so differentiating this group and getting very high levels of awareness were critical to its success. In a brainstorming session one of our team members started talking about rubber ducks (the U of O’s mascot is the duck) and something clicked in my mind.
After more brainstorming we were ready to pitch the client. Our idea was to launch a 7-week buzz marketing campaign based on 8,000 rubber ducks. A traditional on-campus ad campaign would not do the job; instead of advertising to students, we needed to generate curiosity and have students come to us. The faculty advisor loved our proposal and instead of dropping us, granted us a $5,000 contract.
The hub of the campaign was a Facebook page of The Flight’s new mascot: Fred Flight. We created an entire personality for Fred and started asking people to be his friend and writing on peoples’ walls.
Week one of the campaign was a smashing success. Late one night, our team met up on campus and covered the Memorial Quad with 6,000 rubber ducks with a sticker on them.
The following day, Fred received hundreds of new friends on Facebook and all but about 100 of the ducks were taken by students.
Facebook proved to be a better medium than any of us could have ever predicted. Throughout the campaign we constantly prompted students to interact with Fred via his Facebook profile and constantly they responded positively. We held a spring break photo contest and got dozens of entries. When Fred’s friends had birthdays, we wrote on their walls and they often wrote back. People, unprompted, started posting photos of themselves and Fred hanging out on the weekends.
Each week, we launched another prank-style guerrilla tactic to keep peoples’ attention. Some favorites include parachuting 100 rubber ducks on unsuspecting students at high traffic times and organizing a scavenger hunt complete with prizes. Throughout the campaign our Flight Mobiles were constantly cruising around campus to keep peoples’ attention.
This video of the Paraduck prank was shot by a student and posted on Facebook:
Notice the quick shot the remote controlled Flight Duck.
The campaign was more successful than I could have ever dreamed. Our goal was simply to raise awareness, but immediately students wanted to sign up and join The Flight. Presently, Fred has over 300 friends on Facebook and The Flight has over 150 paid members.
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