And Greek Rush.

This marks my fifth year at Mercer and my third as a Greek gentleman. This will also be my last year and my last opportunity to shape the future of my brotherhood, so expect a continued lack of updates over the next couple of weeks as I help introduce those bright eyed freshmen to the joys of college life!

For the most part, society only hears about the bad side of Greek life. After all, the torments of hazing and the violence of the latest bar brawl make for a much more sensational story (and better ratings for Channel Nine) than a Habitat fund-raiser or a street cleanup. Therefore the unfortunate mistakes of a few shine a bad light on the whole – thanks to the wonders of the media. Now I will admit that the “darker” side does exist – but it’s usually much less sensational than it’s made out to be – and I still maintain that all those “haters” are just mad because they didn’t get “in.” Now I will admit that we do have our drunken nights, hung over mornings, and other stereotypical “incidents” – but everyone forgets that on many campuses, the Greek average GPA is higher than the all-womens or all-mens average GPA. Or that the Greek community raised thousands (sometimes hundreds of thousands) of dollars for charity. There are also a much wider range of behaviors than you see portrayed in popular media. Granted, the college I attend and the fraternity of which I’m a brother (especially my chapter) are probably definitely not the norm, and I can’t speak for any sororities, but my Greek experience has been much different than the nightly news or latest movie would lead you to believe.

Which leads me to the new show, Greek. To put things off to a pretentiously bad start, the infamous “red cup” is prominent in all promotions for the show (not that I have anything against red cups). And, as expected, there is plenty of fraternal beverage consumption (though often to humorous effect). However, Greek doesn’t dwell on or appear the sport nearly as much as I expected – it’s just presented as a “fact of life.” Greek centers around Rusty (a college freshman), his sister Casey, and their interactions with the Greek social system. Three fictional Greek organizations are depicted – Zeta Beta Zeta, Kappa Tau Gamma, and Omega Chi Delta. Casey belongs to ZBZ, a pretentious and petty sorority of “hotties.” Rusty pledges KTG, the “party boy” fraternity, and Casey’s boyfriend Evan is the president of OXD – the “good guys.”

I was initially critical of the show, but after watching a few episodes, it appears to be better than I expected. My only real gripe is the limited, somewhat stereotypical treatment of the Greek system, though it is rather difficult to portray every aspect of Greek life in a TV show. My only other complaint is the music selection is, for the most part, terrible. This goes a long way in pulling Greek down to the level of a cliche “ABC Family, yay” show. Perhaps less background music would be better. Yea, that’s definitely it (be sure to listen out for the “feel good guitar” background music. Ugh).

I can see myself being entertained by Greek for a little while, at least until Heroes and Lost return. The current storyline is engaging and will hopefully stay well above the misery of the background music. If you want to see for yourself, ABC has an online viewer (though last time I checked it wasn’t working) or you can visit this site for a torrent.

Scene: A darkly lit and noisy bar.

Me: Hey there hottie.

Unknown Hottie: Why hello!

Me: I’m only 65% pure. How bout you?

Strange Hottie: Oooo I’m 75% pure

Me: Wanna go work on decreasing that? I bet I can knock 10% off in the next 30 minutes!

It’s also a funny way to compare yourself to your friends, with the brilliant suggestion of a “Purity Test Party.” Go on, you know you want to!

Oh, and friends: I think we’ll have to hold one of those parties.

Here is a few thumbnails of some of the posters included in the package. SVG (Vector) originals for all the posters are included, so you can print them as big or small as you like, change the text, etc. I have also included some sample brochures that we passed out (both an invitation for the sororities, because we have ladies present during our recruitment, and an informational handout for recruits) for your enlightenment. Hopefully the materials herein will be beneficial for someone, because I know they were for us. Please keep in mind that I am releasing my work under a CC license, but the Alpha Tau Omega Nationals has copyright of ATO, Alpha Tau Omega, and all related images (such as the badge and the interlock). Therefore they may not be reused in any “inappropriate” ways. If you find these things useful, please leave a comment or some feedback – I’d love to see or hear about what you’ve done with them! We only ended up producing one poster, the “Characteristics of an ATO” poster. It was printed as an 18″x26″ poster, if my memory serves me correctly. We had the printing done by LargeFormatPosters.com and it cost around $300 for 20 posters.

Note: All SVG source images were created with InkScape on a Windows system.

You can download the complete set of files from here.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

While the topic of this post is very specific (Greek recruitment), there may exist parallels to advertising in general. Hopefully this article will be of use to many different readers, not just those looking to become more effective recruiters.

Reasoning and Motivation, or General Principles

As a brotherhood, we are trying to sell ourselves to potential recruits. When someone unfamiliar with the Greek system sees us, we want him to be impressed with the way we handle ourselves and interact with each other. To do this effectively requires a sense of excitement and enthusiasm amongst the brothers. Therefore, an important part of any rush campaign should focus on creating a sense of enthusiasm and excitement amongst the brothers.

A second dimension of the rush campaign should be a focus on the people who support the fraternity, mainly the women with whom we associate (though our alumni also play a very important role). These are the people that attest to our qualities when our backs are turned and can (especially in the case of women) make the most significant impression upon prospective recruits. An external testimony to our qualities and characteristics holds much more value than many of the things that we will actually say about ourselves, because it cannot be perceived as a fabrication construed to entice pledges without any underlying substance.

Finally, the recruitment campaign should target and create interest amongst potential recruits. This is the aspect that is commonly focused on, often to the detriment of the prior aspects. Recruits should be presented with material, activities, and conversations that encourage them to engage, ask questions, and pursue more information about the fraternity. When supported by enthusiasm amongst the brothers and our women and alumni, this builds the entire campaign into a solid recruitment strategy, hopefully resulting in an outstanding pledge class and continued growth of the chapter.

Methodology and Channels – an Example

After rethinking my approach to recruitment, I began to contemplate possibilities for achieving the aforementioned goals.

In today’s networked age, almost everyone has access to the Internet, and a college setting is definitely no exception to this rule. Additionally, social networking has seen explosive growth, with sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Flickr rising to fame. At Mercer University (home to the Alpha Zeta chapter), Facebook is a huge success with profiles representing an overwhelming majority of the student body. With the addition of Facebook for high schools, almost every incoming freshman is already a member and is very familiar with Facebook.

Over the past year, I have employed Facebook for many things, including promoting parties and events. Why not employ Facebook to meet some of the campaign goals? With this in mind, I set out to devise a way to begin creating excitement amongst the brothers and our supportive friends. While common Facebook publicity takes the form of paid advertising or the creation of parties and groups, these tools are commonplace. I wanted something new and creative.

Social Advertising and Creative Approach

The solution, as usual, came in the form of a simple reapplication of an existing feature. Facebook gives users the ability to upload a picture and then “tag” it with the names of people in the picture. Upon being “tagged,” the system sends each tagged user an email informing them that a new picture of them has been posted, as well as linking the picture to their account. I hypothesized that this could easily be used for my own means.

Using a simple graphic, I tagged every brother and many of the women and alumni who support our chapter. People received their emails, logged into their accounts, and went to find the new “picture” of them – simply to be reminded that recruitment is just around the corner. Simple, effective, and to the point – exactly what advertising was intended to be.

As recruitment gets closer, I will be employing more ideas of this nature. While this is effective, one must be sure not to over-use one method, especially if it is a non-traditional application of existing tools. This would quickly result in reduced effectiveness and fringes on annoying the people targeted by the advertisement. A large part of the battle is finding new and creative ways to spread your message.

Traditional

On a more traditional front, we will be producing and distributing T-shirts and posting traditional printed media (fliers, posters, pamphlets). These are time-proven solutions to a problem, and when combined with new channels still present an effective method of advertising and has been used successfully on many occasions. Combined with creative approaches, the traditional methods should maintain their effectiveness.

Limitations

As with many other topics, there are downsides and limitations to everything; Facebook requires you to be “friends” with everyone that you tag to a picture, or know the name of each person that you invite to a party. Repurposing a venue to create “creative advertising” can become annoying if overused. Posters will only be seen and read by some people, and cost money to produce. T-shirts are expensive. However, when creativity is used to find new and creative ways to work the system, the best results are obtained. Therein lie both the challenge and the opportunity for creativity.

Conclusion

The bottom line is simply stated: be creative and think outside the box. Hopefully I have presented you with some ideas that can be used to make your recruitment campaign a more effective one and to help you think about things from a different angle. A well-planned and executed campaign should encompass a broader view of recruitment, which in turn should give you the edge to stand out in the crowd. I hope that, given the considerations outlined above, everyone can design a creative and resourceful campaign that returns the desired results.

If you have any suggestions, success stories, creative ideas, or random comments, be sure to leave a comment / trackback!

November 2006: I have added a selection of my recruitment materials! Check them out here.