I got high-fived by a stranger a while ago for wearing the uniform displayed above.
Ever since Refusionshaka last year, the most popular student event in the fall, our dance crew’s presence on campus has exploded. The iconic black, white, and gold windbreakers are widely known on campus, holding as much weight as our name.
It wasn’t randomly thrown together- the Refresh Windbreaker went through an entire design process, kicked off due to a marketing problem that began with the death of Facebook.
The Problem
As times change, conventional campus marketing practices die
This is how all Dance crews publicized their shows, in a nutshell, i.e. the As-is journey:
- Come up with a theme, such as “Fusion throws a party”
- Create digital and physical marketing campaigns.
- Put the digital campaigns on Facebook, and stick flyers up everywhere on campus.
The core issue comes up in #3. Let’s say you make some incredibly eye-catching, beautifully crafted flyer and put it up on a bulletin board.
It’ll end up here:
The alternative, digital marketing, is now becoming obsolete due to incoming students simply not having Facebook accounts, while Instagram and Snapchat aren’t great for free marketing.
Moreover, from talking to students on campus, we found that when digital marketing is effective, it’s effective because it reminds a few core fans of our shows, who go on to bring their friends along.
As a result, Refresh Dance Crew can’t draw enough attention to upcoming shows because social media promotion is no longer reaching our core fanbase.
Our Solution
Bold, memorable, and physical branding starting with a new uniform
- Create an high-impact, unconventional, and memorable uniform
- Wear it during Refusionshaka, the biggest dance performance on campus
- Wear them again before following shows as a simple marketing campaign
The reason why this is effective is because if the uniform becomes memorable, having the crew wear it around campus before a show serves the same function as digital marketing, except less intrusive and with much wider reach. This way we can “train” our core audience to understand that when our uniforms are present on campus, a show is coming up.
As such, I tested a few designs on people with the objective being optimizing for maximum retention and visual impact.
The Result
There was push-back at first; the crew wanted merchandise that they could wear around casually, not something gaudy or flashy. Nevertheless, we were able to convince Exec to move forward after simplifying the design as a compromise, and pushed it to production.
Our presence on campus greatly improved after Refusionshaka 2017, leading to an actual increase in attendance for our show at the end of that quarter from 1.4 in 2017 to 1.6 thousand in 2018, despite the number of students that marked “going” on Facebook dropping over 20%.
Our black, white, and gold uniform is now our most recognized piece of merchandise, with crew members who had already graduating requesting to order up to half a year after it was released.
Our Process
Maximizing impact and brand retention
My partner in crime: Deepa M.