The GennY Award recognizes best practices of those who have applied new and innovative techniques to connect and communicate with youth. The 2012 award will be given to one exceptional marketing campaign at the Millennial Mega Mashup next week, but we want to highlight the finalists to showcase the unique ways they’ve Millennialized their marketing efforts to reach this influential generation.
CATEGORY: Grassroots
Campus Solutions/Summer’s Eve
The Summer’s Eve “ID The V” campaign focused on large universities and sororities in the Southwest. The program was designed to educate young women about their own bodies and personal care by providing them with a quiz called “ID The V” and distributing samples of Summer’s Eve wipes. Brand ambassadors challenged girls on campus to take the quiz presented on Blackberry Tablets.
Ypulse: This campaign hits on a personal topic and can be embarrassing to talk about – how did you prepare brand ambassadors and design their script to cover this topic?
Campus Solutions: We addressed the topic of female human anatomy from an educational and professional standpoint. The artwork design for the quiz looked like something out of a textbook. We realized young women on today’s college campuses are more liberal than ever before. Our brand ambassadors were trained to engage students by being direct and using “textbook terms” to describe the female anatomy while keeping in mind the quiz was to be enlightening and fun.
YP: Using tablet technology provided real-time answers to the ID the V quiz, but did they also lend an air of cool to your campaign and help drive interaction?
CS: Yes! The quiz was specifically designed to be open and honest, not condescending or trivial. Just straight forward. We believe this lead more young women to be open to taking the quiz. Being straight forward upped the cool factor.
YP: Do you plan to expand to more schools? If so, would you change the campaign in any way or adapt it to different types of schools?
CS: Yes, we are currently considering options of expanding the promotion to include 30-50 schools. Up to this point the campaign has been anonymous however there is talk to include capturing contact information from students to engage them through email, Facebook, and Twitter for future offers and new product info.
YP: Why did you choose to put special focus on sororities with in-house discussions and sample giveaways?
CS: The sororities offered us an instant focus group. The feedback we received was more natural and thorough because interaction time was longer, and we were in a comfortable environment so the young women felt more at ease.
YP: Finally, what is an important thing for the world to understand about Millennials?
CS: Millennials are often thought of as not having time for interacting with brands but we have found on college campuses and in sororities, when brands put forth the effort to engage students on their turf, they are willing to spend quality time learning about products, their features, and how they can apply them to their lives.
YP: Stay tuned for more Millennial marketing Q&As with other GennY Award finalists this week!
