Andrew: This course is about college marketing. The course is led by Leah
Bell, Director of Business Development and the co-founder of UQ Marketing
which helps brands reach college consumers through peer-to-peer marketing
and grass roots campaigns. I'll help you, I'll just be the moderator here.
My name is Andrew Warner. I'm the founder of Mixergy.com where proven
founders like Leah teach.



Before we get into it I want to go over, to the big board, I want to go
over some of the super powers that you guys will get at the end of this
program. In fact, I won't cover everything but I do want to point your
attention to a few of them. The first is we're going to talk about what
motivates millennials. I want you to pay special attention to that and I
think you'll see that some of what motivates them and what motivates
college students is motivating you right now. I want you to pay attention
to that one. We also want to take a look especially at how to recruit
influentials. Even if you have no interest in going after the college
market I think this will be especially helpful for you. You'll see the no
tools way of doing that so pay especial attention to that section.



We're going to talk about how to recruit an army of influentials of
insider, excuse me, an army of insider informers. There, I'm putting an
exclamation point next to that so everyone sees that and makes sure to
notice that. Check out the report that one student put together, Leah's
going to show it to you as we go through this course. Then, the final thing
I want you to pay special attention to is the documentation of the process.
Here, I'll put an exclamation point next to that. It's something that you
might have noticed a lot of entrepreneurs who I've interviewed here and
done courses with on Mixergy have done and you're going to, I think, want
to hear that section.



All right, but the very first thing that I know is on your mind, let's go
to the big board, is what's possible. Leah, you had a situation with a
company called Scrounge where they had a problem that I think a lot of our
audience will be able to identify with. What was the problem and then I
want to hear what you did for them because that's what our audience is
going to want to do for themselves. What was the problem that they had?



Leah: Yeah, so Scrounge, they essentially are on online deal site. They
wanted to be, essentially, the Groupon for college. They had already gotten
the seed one round, they were going back to investors to, they needed more
money. But they were having a really hard time hitting some of their user
goals as far as numbers go. The marketing they were doing didn't work for
them. They thought it was going to catch on by itself and it wasn't.



That's where we came in and we helped them implement promotions at some of
their top two campuses in the New York region. We were actually able to
help them gain new users through hiring a team of influential students on
campus. Giving them marketing materials that spoke directly to students at
their campus, we were highlighting the most popular venues.



Andrew: Here, this is, by the way, this is the marketing strategy that you
put together for them. You offered to show it to our audience. This is what
you did for them and this is the kind of thing that our audience will be
able to do at the end of this session. And as a result of all this what
happened to them?



Leah: We actually were able to get about 4,600 users in two weeks for them.
Their goal was 4,000 so we over-achieved that. Those users were engaged.
They were exactly in their target market that they wanted. They were able
to then go back and have success in their next conversations with their
investors.



Andrew: OK, and why is this college market, first of all that's impressive
to be able to get that many users in such a short period of time. And not
just strangers online who click a link but real people who are in colleges,
who are taking action. That's impressive and that's what I want for my
audience. Why is this audience so unique? Why college as opposed to, say,
entrepreneurs or random people on the internet? What's so special about
this audience?



Leah: College students are really open. They are learning their brand
preferences for the first time. Think about it, up until now mom and dad
have done the majority of their purchasing for them. Some of these habits
that they form in college are going to stay with them for the rest of their
life. Their customer lifetime value is significantly higher than, you know,
someone in their 40's or 50's which is why you start to see a lot of
advertisements more marketed towards a millennial demographic. Car
companies, you know, they want those young consumers and get them early. I
think that's why this is such a lucrative market for a lot of advertisers.



Andrew: And here's another thing that I notice in just talking to you and
getting to know UQ and the work that you've done. College students will do
this kind of thing for the brands that they're into. We'll talk about this
later, what's going on here. This is the kind of passion, this is the kind
of activity, this is the kind of energy that they're willing to put into a
brand and business that they care for. From what I know about entrepreneurs
and the general audience who's watching our programs here on Mixergy, this
is the kind of passion that they have. To be able to find people who share
that passion, who share the willingness to go out of their way to promote
it, I think, has got to be refreshing and inspiring.



Let's talk about how we can get this down for our audience, the kind of
things that your were able to get for yours. We go back to the big board,
and here's the first tactic that we're going to take on. We're going to
figure out if our product is even a good fit for college. You're not going
to pretend that this is good for everyone, but you want us to see if it's a
good fit. Tell me about a customer, maybe your potential customer, for whom
it wasn't a good fit, so maybe we'll understand that, if you could.



Leah: Sure. So we were approached by an app company who was building a
safety app. They were hopefully going to have this essentially personal
alarm, if you will. If you felt unsafe, it would contact local authorities
and give them your location. It was pretty expensive. I think that just to
get started it was a fifty dollar commitment. They wanted to focus on
college students because campus safety is a hot topic right now. A lot of
college campuses are very concerned about this. What I told them was,
essentially, from my experience, students aren't going to pay very much for
an app like this. They might, if it's something that they can show off, but
I don't think that's your true target market. I think parents might be who
you want to go after. I encourage anyone who has a product that they're
thinking about marketing to college students to do something very simple.
Go to campus, and just ask students. They will give you their honest
opinion, and you can save yourself a lot of hassle. It's really that
simple. Just talk to people and get their honest feedback, and then you'll
know. If they're really excited, they will show you, and if they're not,
maybe you should consider a different market to focus on.



Andrew: The market research can be that basic, to just go in there and say,
"Here's my iPad, this is my business, is this something you guys are into?"
or "Here's my physical product. Are you into it?" they give us yes or no.
If they're saying no, don't try to persuade them, just accept this isn't
right for you.



Leah: Exactly. If you have to persuade them, there are students are going
to have to persuade them. It's hard for a lot of entrepreneurs to swallow,
because they think their product is going to be perceived a certain way,
but you just have to be very honest with yourself in that process.



Andrew: Of course, if this is the right fit, I still know that by going
through session here, that people are going to get some ideas that they can
use in other markets. Hopefully, this is the right fit for it, because
based on what you've been telling me, this is really a hot area to go
after. All right, anything else about this before we go on to the next big
idea?



Leah: I don't think so.



Andrew: All right. So, decide whether or not it's the right fit for this
company. I am safe it was not the right fit, and then we go on to the big
board again, where the next big tactic is to learn what motivates
millennials. The secret sauce, you say is, well, you tell me. What is the
secret sauce?



Leah: So if you are hiring college students to be your brand reps, we call
them brand-builders. You might think, "Well, I need to pay these people a
lot of money." What we've found is they could care less. Money's always
great, and I want to pay the students, because they work so hard for us,
but what really gets them excited and gets them to achieve results is
showing them genuine appreciation and recognition for their own work. If
they do a great job, make it known that you appreciate that. Something as
simple as recognizing them on your website or sending an email to all the
reps saying "Johnny did the best this week." It can go so far for you. It
takes five seconds and it makes them feel good. They'll work harder for
you, and it honestly motivates everyone else too, because if you're hiring
the right students, they will be competitive. They'll want to be the best,
and they'll want to get that recognition the next week.



Andrew: So, basic recognition, which really goes against what we think as
entrepreneurs. We either believe that, out of a sense of inferiority
because we're getting started, we don't have enough money to win over the
people that we need, or, we believe it out of a sense of superiority
because we're doing well in business. Either way, we think people want
money. You're saying no, it's recognition. Let's take a look at examples of
how that was done. What's this?



Leah: So, one of our clients is seamless. They're an online food and
delivery company where you can actually place an order to local restaurants
and have them delivered to you. Our students had a lot of really great
content to share what they were doing on campus. Instead of having that
stop, they actually posted that on YouTube on a Seamless on campus channel
and made it available to their entire YouTube community. Students were
really proud of this. They actually posted these videos on their own
personal Facebook walls because they thought it was just so cool that this
company had put their video up on their corporate page.



Andrew: Wait, so students are that excited? Just because the company is
putting the video that the students made on their corporate page students
start to pass it around and say hey, look, I'm on the Seamless website.



Leah: Yeah, it's like bragging rights. Especially if you're a brand that
they're proud of, they want to be affiliated with that and they'll share it
like crazy every way they can. It's a really simple and easy and free thing
that you can do and get great results and traffic.



Andrew: How do you get students to, well, let's see. Do we even have? Yeah,
here's one. This is, is this a student interviewing other students at
George Washington University?



Leah: Exactly. He was interviewing them, where their favorite places to eat
on campus were. He was walking up to random people. I believe he actually
even interviewed a squirrel. He had a lot of fun with it and once he posted
it on his Facebook wall he was actually able to tag the people that he knew
so it also showed up on their Facebook page. It really does, you know, has
a level of virality to it. I hate using the word viral but in a smaller
community it can become that way.



Andrew: How do you get these students to interview each other about your
product and to interview each other about, beyond your small product, what
you're about? How do you get a guy like this to walk around with a mic and
talk to other people?



Leah: He was somebody that we hired. He was our Seamless rep at GW. He
loved Seamless, even [??] job he submitted a video and every week we gave
him very concrete goals. We broke down the campus into a lot of digestible
segments because our students, they tap out their, you know, network of
maybe 200 people within the first two weeks. How do you get them outside of
that comfort zone? Honestly, it's almost stereotyping the campus. Go after
the jocks. Go after the Greeks. It just makes it a lot more achievable for
them and if they're able to put it in a category they'll start to have that
outreach go even further.



This video in particular was we actually were going to, we held a little
mini-contest among our reps and the best video, they won a party for them
and their friends sponsored by Seamless. We just sent a bunch of pizzas and
that was their motivation as well, on top of the recognition and [??].



Andrew: Let me see if I understand this. This guy, the guy in the video
who's doing the interviews, is he getting paid? He's a rep so he is getting
paid, right?



Leah: He gets paid, yes. He was actually paid $100 a month.



Andrew: $100 a month you pay him to be your local rep. He, and there are
other reps at other colleges, he does things like this to win prizes like
pizza for his friends.



Leah: Exactly.



Andrew: OK, so he's walking around doing these interviews. A bunch of
people, a bunch of reps who are also getting $100 a month at other colleges
are doing similar interviews. The one that wins ends up getting a pizza
party for his friends and, as you said earlier, more importantly he gets to
build his reputation. Now he's the guy who helped Seamless establish itself
at this university and who showed all of the other students. He is the top
rep.



Leah: Exactly. And they're also, you know, they view this as an experience.
This is something they can put on their resume. At the end of every
campaign we get hundreds of thank you letters from our students saying I
learned so much. They are not just a rep for that one semester that we hire
them. They're honestly a rep for, I believe for life. You know, they'll
always have this...



Andrew: You see what he just did, by the way? This guy's good. I don't know
if anyone saw it. He's just, first of all I think he's using a spoon as a
microphone but he just snatched some food from this kid's plate and the kid
noticed it. He's having fun with it. He's really being creative. I can see
what he's trying to do. He's really being competitive with this and, as you
said, in the end it goes on his resume. The key though is you get these
reps, give them a few bucks. You give them some assignments. You give them
a list of people to target. The jocks, the Greeks, etc. And then you give
them, what else? What else do you do once you, what else do you give them?
What else do you arm them with, excuse me?



Leah: We do give them a manual. If they are representing your brand you
want to make sure that they're doing that the right way. I think what makes
us different and where we see a lot of other brand ambassador programs fail
is we have a very high, high level of communication. One of our secret
tools that we use is Group Me because college students, most of them don't
like email but they will text you. If you can set up Group Me accounts and
text people all at once and get the conversation flowing that way as well.
I think just having that open communication with students is so important
as well.



Andrew: All right, and this is the manual, basically, that you put
together, the cover of it. You're not going to give away all your secrets
here. This is one that we're not going to be able to go through, or will
we? Would you be willing to give this to our audience, a copy of your
manual?



Leah: I would not, I'm sorry.



Andrew: That's what I thought. Fair enough. The idea is, you're giving them
a manual and letting them know what to do to really rock this position.



Leah: Exactly.



Andrew: All right. On to the big board here, the next big tactic is
"Recruit influential students to leverage connections." You're saying skip
Craigslist. Tell me where I can find these influentials.



Leah: If you're an entrepreneur, you know the importance of networking. The
same goes this way. Just start talking to people and understand what
organizations on campus are the most influential, and focus there. The way
that we find students is, once we have that pool of applicants from those
influential organizations. We actually do a Skype interview.



Andrew: I'm sorry. You get them to be applicants to what? They're applying
to be the reps?



Leah: Yes, exactly.



Andrew: OK. So you go out to all those clubs that everyone's told you are
the hot clubs. They're the ones that have influence on campus, and you say,
"We're looking to recruit reps from this brand on your school. Apply."
They'll apply, and now you're trying to figure out who's really got
influence. Who has the power to communicate our brand well? And then you're
doing Skype interviews with them? What was the next thing?



Leah: Yeah, you use Skype interviews to narrow it down to maybe a top five
per campus. We take it even a step further and have them show us, "Prove to
us you love this brand." We do that through them submitting videos, for the
most part. We love videos, and so do our clients. Once we have those
videos, we put them on our client's Facebook page to draw traffic to that
page.



Andrew: Are these those videos, by the way? This is videos that they've
created?



Leah: these are some of our favorite ones, yes. Even that one the second
page down is pretty hilarious. He did a rap. So they're actually sharing it
with all their friends, and you'll see who is influential, because some
students will get 20 or 30 likes. Others will get 500+ likes in five days.
That's when you can kind of just look, see the numbers for yourself, and
look at the whole picture based on your knowledge of that student. Having
this video (?), measuring the likes and activity that they are able to
generate, will really show who is the top student at that school.



Andrew: This is unreal, by the way. That's the brand, right there. There's
Hoist. That's your company, the one that's looking to hire a rep. He's
worked it into his video. He's put in all this time and production into
this video, just so he can be a rep. That means he earns a few hundred
bucks a semester, and a lot of experience, and a lot of time with the brand
and credibility. That's what he's working for. He did this much work.



Leah: Yeah.



Andrew: That's impressive. I asked you before we started, I said, "What
tools, Leah, do you have to measure how many likes they get and who has the
most likes," and you surprised me by saying, "Andrew, you don't have to
have tools." So how do you figure out who's got the most likes and who is
the most influential on campus. What do you do?



Leah: We essentially embed all the videos on our client's Facebook page. If
they don't want it on their home wall, you can create a separate tab, but
you just count. You look and it will tell you. This person has 520 likes.
This person has 20 likes. You can the in the comments who's getting this
conversation going, and you can select them that way. It's really that
simple.



Andrew: All right, this guy is a lot of fun. That's what you're doing. You
want to find reps that you want to hire. You don't just want to go on
Craigslist and say "We're hiring college students." You don't even want to
go to the local newspaper, you're going to the influential clubs and groups
and say, "Hi. We're looking to hire. Please pass this around." They apply,
they create videos like this, and then you get them to like them. By the
way, even the application process is now promoting Hoist, I see on this.



Leah: Exactly. If Facebook likes and engagement are important to you, then
this is a great way to do it.



Andrew: Did he just spray paint a wall? Your clients must love this stuff.



Leah: Yeah, it's great. One of my favorite parts of our programs is the
actual recruitment. These videos are so amazing, I'm constantly impressed.



Andrew: Unreal. All right, back to the big board. The next big idea is "Go
to the crowd." I always ask, in my interviews and when I meet other
entrepreneurs, how can I get customers to come to my site? How can I get
visitors to come to my site? You're saying Andrew, that's the wrong
approach to take. The right one is to say go to the crowd. Meaning what?



Leah: So many times people want to throw their own events off campus. They
want to have a tailgate. Well, it's really hard to get a lot of people
excited about something that they don't even know about. But something that
they're already doing is going to these large events that they look forward
to every year. We do some event planning but instead of doing that we
recommend tapping into the large events on campus.



Your student knows what those are. At the beginning of the semester when
you're talking to them ask them what are the three events you can't miss
this semester? They'll probably say something like a sports rivalry game.
They'll say something like a dance marathon or philanthropy. And maybe
they'll say some sort of drinking event. That's usually what we come
across. But, you know, I guess plan your event schedule around those things
because they already have thousands of people showing up.



Andrew: Do you partner with the events that already exist or do you create
a side event alongside the event that already exists?



Leah: We partner with events that already exist. A lot of times our
students have friends who are on the student planning boards, if you've
recruited the right person. You can avoid some of the sponsorship costs.
This is an example from UCLA, the dance marathon. They have over 2,000
students dancing for 48 hours straight to raise money for AIDS awareness
and research. We went there and our students knew people on the planning
boards so we didn't have to pay the $2,000 sponsorship fee. We just got to
show up. Then we also, you know, hosted an eating contest onstage. We were
not only there, present and promoting at the event, we were actually
involved in the event's activities.



Andrew: And you didn't have to pay to be a sponsor just because your rep
was friends with the person who was organizing this dance marathon. All you
had to do was bring some pizza or some food for them to do an eating
contest and be a part of it, not a leech.



Leah: Exactly. I felt kind of guilty, honestly, because we're next to
tables with, you know, Coca-Cola and some of the local businesses and I
know they all paid. But it just, it is having that strong network through
the students. That's how you gain access to these events.



Andrew: Then I guess you put this up on your Facebook page and they're all
trying to see if they were in there and they're tagging each other and
talking about this.



Leah: Exactly. Yeah, they...



Andrew: This one didn't seem to get a lot of views. 53 views.



Leah: This one, it's interesting. This one didn't get as many views and I
think this was because it was one of our managers took the video. If I did
have to do it again I think I would have had one of our students taking the
video instead of one of our managers because I think they would have shared
it more.



Andrew: I see. By managers you mean you guys have managers?



Leah: Yes, this was an event that I had one of our managers go to in LA.



Andrew: OK, sounds like a fun job for your manager.



Leah: Yeah.



Andrew: All right. Next big tactic is, let's go to the big board. Form an
army of insider informers. These are the people who are going to get you
information about the school. I've got a report that one of your informers
put together for you that we'll show in a moment. But first tell me a
little bit about this. What do we do with this?



Leah: If you are constantly, you know, recruiting from the same
organization befriend the presidents and possibly speak to them. Not only
are they going to help you find your brand ambassadors semester after
semester but they'll tell you what's going on and what's going to come up
on campus. You can even create an email list and email all the campuses
that you're on and ask, you know, in the next two months what events are
coming up that we can help you with? You know, do you need sponsorship?
Even if it's just us donating free food how can we get involved?



I think that is a really great place to start. Plus it just helps you
understand the school better. If you do have them fill out some kind of
questionnaire where you can stock that away so every year you go back and
you know exactly what's going on at that school and you understand the
campus. Then you can tailor your campaign to that school. You know it's a
big Greek school, you're going to focus on Greeks. You know they're all
about athletics, you want to have more of a sports focus. I mean, it
doesn't have to be rocket science but just creating some kind of
personalization for each campus is really important because students can
tell when you understand what their campus is about. They appreciate that
and will pay attention more.



Andrew: This is one of the reports. I thought you hired a company to do
this. A student, your student rep put this together, right?



Leah: Yes. We sent them the template and they filled it in for us.



Andrew: And the template includes what? What are you looking for? You want
to know the population, so they could look that up. You want to know if
it's public or private, they could get that. Greek, meaning
sorority/fraternity, they could look that up too. The mascot, the
Longhorns. I see, so now you're really starting to collect information.
What are these quotes?



Leah: We want to understand what students, what they have to say about
their school. Just in a short one sentence how would you describe your
school? It's a great way to just get some insight into, you know, what it's
like to go to school there.



Andrew: We've got here the University of Texas at Austin welcomes bright
minds to follow their passions and learn from their peers and professors.
That seems like they copied and pasted it from somewhere. The relationships
I've created at UT have heavily influenced my direction in life and have
served in bettering who I am as a person. All right, so they give quotes
and then they also list the top five spring events, the top five fall
events. I can see how that would be huge. University report continues with
traditions, the trends there, campus culture, you want to know about what
kind of music they listen to, what kind of technology, student stereotypes.
The hipster, the Greeks, I see. Let's see, and then it just goes on. Can we
give this to the audience?



Leah: Yes, of course. They can have this.



Andrew: Oh, this is terrific. This is the kind of thing when you get a rep
you want them to put together for you so you have an understanding of the
school that you couldn't get as an outsider.



Leah: Exactly. Even just doing research online you can get a lot of the
stuff that's on that front page but understanding the trends, you know. At
UT there is a very big hipster culture and just that influences a lot of
things. It influences fashion, the music, like you said. It's just great
information to have that takes it a step further.



Andrew: Yeah, you know what, in some worlds to say that you're a hipster is
bad and at UT, I guess, saying you're a hipster is OK. Technology, there's
an app craze going on at UT. There's kind of an app craze going on here in
my office too. That is always shifting to the next big app. Some apps have
maintained their popularity, like Instagram, Angry Birds people are still
playing, Words with Friends. But others have just gained tremendous growth
in usage like Draw Something and Scrabble with Friends. I guess that's
Scrabble or Scramble with Friends. I can't tell. All right, so this gives
you some really useful information. This is fantastic to be able to put
together. All right...



Leah: Some of our best ideas come from our students, to be honest. A lot of
our client ideas come from students too. Even though I still feel like I'm
close to their age a lot of things have changed since I've been in school.
It just is very important to listen to them because they know what they're
talking about. They're the expert at being in college.



Andrew: You know what, I tried to get an interview with, I won't reveal
their name because they said no, but with a company that's really good at
getting into local tech communities. And start promoting their technology
and getting it embedded into other systems. One of the things that they do
is they sponsor local events. I've seen this work really well for
companies. They'll sponsor the local bar camp[SP] or the local, whatever,
meet-up. But they don't even start to do things like this where they have a
local rep.



They just assume if we spend some sponsorship money across the country, buy
pizza and beer, everyone's going to love us. Which does get you a lot of
affection, even in the grown up tech world. But I can see that they could
learn from this and they could have maybe a local tech rep in each
community that they're sponsoring and really be engaged. And it doesn't
have to cost a lot of money. They can give them much more than money, like
an introduction to each other, an introduction to other people in the
community, raise profile and so on. All right, so next big idea. Let's go
to the board. Engage students with off the wall experiences. Such as? What
are some of the experiences? How do we come up with them?



Leah: When you're going on campus you can't just hand out flyers. They're
going to get tossed in the trash. You need to create an experience. One of
our clients that we work with is Nestle and specifically with their
recruitment team. Their challenge was they were planning these events and
no one was showing up and they didn't understand why. Well, their events
were essentially in a classroom just come meet and mingle with a nestle
recruiter. It wasn't enough of a draw.



Andrew: OK.



Leah: We planned a happy hour event for them to attract students and passed
out Raisinets the day before so people knew when the event was.



Andrew: Passed out what the day before? Sorry.



Leah: Raisinets. Free food.



Andrew: OK.



Leah: It tied into their brand and it had all of the event information
stuck to it.



Andrew: Oh, so you didn't just hand out a flyer. You handed out a flyer
with food. They went for the food and they got to read the flyer. That's
how you got them to pay attention.



Leah: Exactly. I mean it's free chocolate. And students were handing it out
so it wasn't some corporate person telling them to go somewhere. We held
the event at one of the most popular bars on campus and we had free pizza
there. But we also had a photo booth. That's what made the event so much
fun and Nestle loved it. Because we actually held a contest where students
wrote why they love Nestle on a chalkboard in our photo booth. And then,
they stuck them to a wall and we chose the top 5 and they got Nestle gift
baskets.  It's something as simple as that.  Get people interacting with
the brand.  People were having fun there, so they ended up staying longer.
They got more applications that year than they ever have.



Andrew:  Applications for what?



Leah:    For the Nestle career program.  They're trying to attract
engineers and business students to come work for Nestle.



Andrew:    I see.  So they're not trying to get people to buy Nestle,
they're just trying to get them to come work for Nestle, and instead of
buying ads in a school paper, Craigslist, Monster and so on, they said,
"No, we're going to engage them," they hired your company, they hired UQ
marketing, and this is what you guys did for them.  You got students to
really engage with the brand, and then apply.



Leah:    Exactly.  There was a line around the corner.  It was amazing.
They were thrilled, and they had a lot of fun at the event, too.  It flew
by.  I wish it could have been longer.  It went off very well and I think
adding a couple simple, fun things and promoting that beforehand can make
such a difference.



Andrew:    I guess you put this up on YouTube and Facebook, too for people
to tag themselves and see each other.



Leah:    Yes.



Andrew:    I couldn't log into your Facebook, but we are on Flickr, where
it's easy to share and see.  Off the wall experiences...  How can companies
come up with these off the wall ideas?  Where do we come up with these
ideas?



Leah:    I say put it on your students, because they will come up with
ideas you've never thought of before that are specific to their campus.
For instance, we had a beverage client that saved people from their
hangover in the morning.  One of our students decided that he wanted to be
a [Hoist] superhero for Halloween.  I expected him to wear a little bit
more clothing than he had on, but he had a blast with it.  He is this 6'8"
guy who essentially wore his boxer-briefs around campus and saved people
with Hoist.



Andrew:    This is him.



Leah:    Yes, that is Pete.  He is hilarious.  So he is a very visible
person on campus.  He is very social and kind of a "frat-star" if you will,
so he got a lot of attention and posted pictures of himself all over at on
Halloween, and people had a lot of fun with him and the Hoist superhero.
Another example was at Boston University, one of our students decided that
she wanted to create her own billboard.  You aren't allowed to have
billboards on campus, but she knew everyone that lived in a certain hall,
so she actually stuck letters that spelled 'Seamless,' which is one of our
clients in the dorm room, and it spilled out into the main quad.  There are
thousands of students that walk through that quad every day, and they could
see 'Seamless' written on the windows, probably thought, "What is that?"
Hopefully they Googled it and found that it was a service that could really
help them, get food delivered straight to them.  That was a lot of fun as
well, and something we had never though of before.



Andrew:    These are ideas that you couldn't come up with, like you said,
but also you might not be allowed to come up with.  You might not be
allowed to tell a guy in college to go get into his underwear and start
parading around the school like a superhero for you brand.  You'd get in
trouble. But if you say, "What ideas do you have?" and let them go with it,
you come up with clever ideas like that.



Leah:    Especially if you have a brand that's fun and you're not as
strict. A lot of brands have strict guidelines, where maybe some of these
things won't fly.  But if you are a smaller company that can have fun with
their brand- don't be so stuffy, because college kids won't relate to that.
 Have fun with it.



Andrew:    Back to the big board.  I can see Nestle not being comfortable
doing something like that with their brand, especially not for hiring.
Back to the big board.  You say, "Share online to amplify what you've done.
 Share online to amplify the offline experiences.  Tag people, because they
will look for themselves."  How do you do that?  We didn't cover this yet,
right?



Leah:    No, it is just something that seems so simple, but unless you make
it a priority, a lot of your efforts can just happen that one time and not
live on.  When you have brand ambassadors you're working with, give them a
goal every week, and an easy way for them to share that content with you.
We use Dropbox.  I love Dropbox.  Essentially, tell them, "We just need 10
pictures from you every week.  10 is a very easy number, whether that's
pictures or video, and have them drop it into Dropbox.  They can download
the app on their phone, it's free for them.  That's something very simple
you can do.  You can post those pictures on your Facebook page and have
them tag their friends. As long as you're making it a priority and you're
communicating that constantly those efforts on campus won't just happen
that one time. You can make them live on and amplify that online.



Andrew:  You just ask them to take pictures of what they see in school that
relates to the brand, or just anything in general? Just snap pictures
around the school?



Leah: If they are going to an on-campus event make sure that their top
priority at that event is not only to promote that brand but to capture
what they're doing. You know, whether they're at a tailgate and you're
passing out koozies, get people holding the koozy with your brand. Because
people go look for that picture of themselves and then it will become of
their Facebook, you know, photo slide.



Andrew: Got it. All right, I think I've got a video of that. Let me see if
I can click over and go to it right now. Or is this something we've seen
before? Yeah, this is the interview. This is one thing that he decided to
do. He decided to go around and start interviewing people.



Leah: Yes, exactly.



Andrew: OK. Others...



Leah: Just make sure that whatever you're doing is able to live online as
well. Because it will just have such a further reach that way.



Andrew: OK. We'll come back to this in a moment. This we talked about. What
else, what other way do you get them to document? Is it just the basic
YouTube, Facebook, and ask people to, YouTube, Facebook, and now you told
me about Drop Box. Anything else more complicated than that or just that
basic?



Leah: If you are, instead of just driving brand awareness and you really
want to track your activation and your new users we use, a lot of times,
like coupon codes and gift cards. So we can actually reward reps based on
their results and not just what they say they're doing. That's a great way
on, a site we use is Get Ambassador. They actually help you create unique
codes if you don't have that already set up in the back end in your system.



Another thing is we have weekly reports they fill out. Because not only do
we want to know how many people have you converted but how many people have
you talked to this week? What did you do? This is also a great time to get
feedback on your brand. Some of the brands that we've worked with have
actually completely changed their product because of the feedback that our
students have given them. Because they realized they weren't meeting the
exact need that they needed to be.



Just ask for as much information as possible and make it really easy for
those students to share. Google Docs is a great way to set up an easy form
and collect that information. I mean there's lots of tools out there you
can Google for free. Just make it easy for students to share and clear what
kind of information that you hope to gather from them.



Andrew: You're just setting up a form on Google Docs where once a week they
go in and they fill out the form. They say this is what I did. Here's the
reaction that I got, etc. Maybe people say Seamless is too difficult to
explain to people. I say Seamless and they say what's Seamless and so on.
You understand as a brand that you're not communicating what your brand is
about. If you're hearing people say that they're, I don't know, they don't
like the color of the product or whatever, you just want the reps to keep
sending that back to you.



Leah: Yeah, and the reps will be happy to tell you what you need to change
because it will make their job easier. Another thing we do is at the
beginning of the semester we take a baseline survey on campus. We get each
student to get 100, 200 responses. Then you take that same exact survey at
the end of the semester. You know what attributes you need to work on, what
worked, what didn't. Hopefully you're seeing a big bump in brand awareness
as well as intent to buy. That's our most important thing that we measure,
is intent to buy. Because if you get awareness to go up but intent to buy
goes down you're wasting your time. Just make sure that you're also
measuring intent to buy.



Andrew: All right, intent to buy is really important. All right, final big
idea. Document the exact process. Document what works. This is one of the
big ideas that I thought was important enough to highlight in the
beginning. What kind of documentation and why is it important?



Leah: You should document every stage of the process because if you don't
you'll be starting from ground zero every single time. A lot of that we've
gone over. The university reports, you know who's the influential
organization on campus and you document that person's contact information.
You make sure that they're giving you their successor's contact information
so you can keep that process going.



Then the manual is a great way to do that as well. The manual is not a
static document. It's something that's dynamic and constantly changing. Get
feedback from your students of what was easy to understand in the manual,
what wasn't. The manual outlines what your brand is, how they should
communicate it. It is also how do they share what they're doing on campus
so that can direct them to the Dropbox or the forum. It also has a calendar
that shows exactly what events are going to be going on at what times, and
when they should start planning for those things. They always have you to
call on, but hopefully the manual will answer a lot of those questions that
can become sort of tedious and repetitive.



Also, at the end of the program, have your students fill out, or have an
anonymous feedback form. They will tell you what you need to change about
your program. Your program will just get better and better every year if it
is something you want to invest your time in. Kind of, I think there was an
ongoing theme, just make sure that you are writing everything down, and
having something that you can scale. If you want to start off at ten
campuses, well maybe you have such great success you decide to do 100
campuses the next semester. That will be so much easier to do if you have
documented your processes along the way. It's something you might be able
to hand off to someone else, which will be great too.



Andrew: You mean to somebody else within your company? Once you understand
how each college works, you don't have to figure it out. You now can hire
someone who can manage it and continue what you've built?



Leah: Exactly.



Andrew: Okay.



Leah: That person could be a student themselves. I believe in interns. I
love interns. Our interns do great work.



Andrew: I bet. I mean, especially your company. You had an example of how
effective all this is with Hoist. How did people on college campuses at
first perceive Hoist, and then how did they perceive it at the end?



Leah: So Hoist, they really had low brand awareness when we first showed
up. They were viewed strictly as a hangover cure, and people were very
skeptical if it actually worked. So, our survey at the beginning of the
semester was kind of daunting. We had a lot to go up against as far as
preconceived notions.



After our campaign, we had two brand ambassadors on each campus. We
measured at the end, what was brand awareness like, and it actually
increased 410%. Then also, we measured intent to buy on a five-point scale,
and I believe it was 0.9.



Andrew: Mm.



Leah: (?) points. It made a big jump in addition to that brand awareness,
which was very great to see for us. What was most exciting to me was our
customer. They told us that their order is within a five-mile radius of the
campuses we were on. Their order in P.O.'s had doubled month-over-month.
That's when I felt like, okay, it was just very rewarding to know that we
helped them increase their sales, and helped them understand their product
more. They're actually doing a complete repackage of their product based on
the learnings that they had from our program. Honestly, it was one of our
first customers, one of our first campaigns. We had a lot to learn
throughout that, but even starting it proves your first time around you can
still have great success. Then, just improve from there.



Andrew: Wow. This is really powerful stuff that I hadn't heard before. I've
been so glad that I was introduced to you by Dan of Optimizely. The ideas
here, I don't see covered many places, but I know the power because I've
seen what you've done for your brands. The company, the website is
uqmarketing.com, for anyone who wants to follow up. You have also, Leah,
this white paper that you showed me that gave us an understanding of what's
possible and how to do it. It's not on your site yet, but there's a way for
us to give it to the audience too? I know I can't give them this manual.



Leah: Yeah. I would love to give them our white paper. We're releasing it
next month. We haven't released it yet, so I would be happy to share that.
It goes over why peer-to-peer marketing works with millennials when other
forms of advertising might not be as effective.



Andrew: Okay. We'll include a link to this in the program notes.



Leah: Great.



Andrew: Wow. All right, thank you so much. A lot of big ideas here. We
hopefully have set you guys on your way with a new tactic and a new idea
that you hadn't discovered before for how to reach potential customers and
how to get great ideas.



One of the things, Leah, that I walked away from this program with is - the
energy and the creativity of these college students. It's not the kind of
thing that we can come up with on our own if we're just sitting around in a
board - no one has a board room anymore - sitting around in a coffee shop
trying to nod around ideas. It's so much more innovative than that. Thank
you for helping us harness this power, or learn how to harness it.



Leah: Thank you for having me.



Andrew: Thank you all for being a part of this. Thank you for watching.