Download RFL College Marketing Guidebook 082010

Relay For Life
College Marketing Guidebook
Midwest Division
2010
Midwest Division
2010
Marketing and Promotion:
Spreading the Mission of the American Cancer Society
Dear Midwest Collegiate Relayers:
Last year, a team of students conducted some market research on Relay For Life on our college
campuses. The results were nothing shy of disturbing. A decent number of students on some of
our strongest Relay campuses were unable to answer questions as simple as “What is Relay?”
and “Where does the money go?” Answers ranged from: “some cancer thing” to “an event in
the spring time.” We even had someone say the money went to the American Red Cross!
This Marketing and Promotional Guidebook is designed to address opportunities and challenges
on the college campus. Seeing that we have many students out there who are not familiar with
the objectives of the American Cancer Society and Relay For Life, this guidebook first outlines
and breaks down the mission statement of the American Cancer Society and how each Relay
For Life event can spread this message through their marketing.
The guidebook then goes on to describe effective marketing strategies (unexpected marketing,
target marketing, word of mouth marketing), branding, promotional activities, and ways to
utilize online marketing. Each section contains best practice ideas and examples from colleges
and universities in our division and from around the country. Keep in mind these are examples
of what has worked in the past at various other schools. The most important thing would be to
take these suggestions and tailor them to the needs of your campus. It is also important to note
the restrictions imposed on you by certain university offices (for example, a posting policy for
flyers and posters). Please be mindful of the rules. We don’t want to give Relay a bad name!
If you have your own best practices or pictures that you would like to share, please feel free to
e-mail them to us. As a division we are always looking to share ideas that can better all of our
events.
Good luck with each of your events!
Happy Relaying,
Taylor Schaubschlager
St. Catherine University
Collegiate Representative
Midwest Youth Advisory Team
[email protected]
We are saving lives and creating a world with more
birthdays.
Thanks to you, the American Cancer Society is working to create a world with more birthdays –
a world where cancer never steals another year from anyone’s life. And we’re getting results.
Eleven million people in America who are surviving cancer – and countless others who have
avoided it – will celebrate another birthday this year, thanks in part to our work.
Together, we’re fighting for every birthday, threatened by every cancer, in every community –
including yours. “Happy Birthday” is our victory song.
When you join us in the movement to create more birthdays, this is how you’re helping the
American Cancer Society save lives:
Helping People Stay Well
We help you celebrate more birthdays by showing you how to stay well. We save lives by
encouraging people everywhere to take steps to prevent cancer or detect it early and provide
you with screening recommendations and simple tips to live a healthier lifestyle.
Helping People Get Well
We help you fight for more birthdays by guiding you through every step of a cancer experience
if you or someone you love is faced with a diagnosis. We provide information to help you make
decisions and offer free services like transportation to and from cancer treatment or a free
place to stay while receiving treatment far from home. We know that every cancer patient is a
fighter – and we’re in the ring with you through every round.
Finding Cures
We support the best ideas of the brightest cancer researchers. Whether it’s discovering
medications that help people live longer and better than ever, or pioneering and promoting the
most promising cancer prevention or screening tests, we’ve been involved in nearly every
major cancer breakthrough in the last century, and every breakthrough brings us one step
closer to a world with more birthdays.
Fighting Back
We believe everyone deserves more birthdays and we work tirelessly to rally lawmakers and
communities to join our fight to save lives from cancer. Whether it’s passing smoke-free laws,
increasing funding for cancer research, improving access to quality health care, or inspiring
communities to take up the fight, we fight on all fronts, because the lessons we learn from one
battlefield can mean victory on another
Promoting the Mission
One of the most impactful forms of marketing your Relay For Life event is to include some
aspect of the mission of the American Cancer Society. Relay establishes a living platform for the
face and voice of the cancer patient, survivor and caregiver. It lets you and the rest of the
participants on your college campus act as agents for change and become life savers.
Relay For Life is not a business or a one day special event in the spring semester. It began as a
fundraiser to help fund a cure for cancer and has turned into a global movement to end cancer.
Take advantage of this movement and incorporate it into your marketing. Include statistics that
people can relate to as college students. Staggering statistics will stop people in their tracks.
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Half of all those who continue to smoke will die from smoking-related diseases. In the
U.S., tobacco use is responsible for nearly one in five deaths: this equaled an estimated
443,000 premature deaths each year between 2000 and 2004.
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In 2010, the American Cancer Society is supporting 994 research grants at 223
institutions for a total of $469 million.
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Evidence suggests that one-third of all cancer deaths can be prevented with proper diet
and exercise.
It is also important to sometimes go beyond the statistics and dig deeper into the heart of the
cause. Think about things like showing what the dollars raised can do and why Relay as a
fundraiser is so important. This allows Relay to become an event that means more than just
raising money – it is a cause that allows you to also educate the student body.
For examples, try Pilates for Pink, a collaboration promoting breast cancer awareness or Quit
Cold Turkey where students hand out info on quitting smoking and give away free turkey
sandwiches.
Relay For Life is a year round global movement to end cancer. Implement year round marketing
activities to raise awareness for this movement. Conduct campus blitz weeks during the fall
semester as well as the spring semester. Tie Relay marketing into cancer awareness months,
like breast cancer awareness month in October.
Effective Marketing Campaigns – Doing the RIGHT things
RIGHT
Unexpected Marketing
When you do things that other campus groups don’t already do (hence: “unexpected”), you are
more likely to grab people’s attention.
Locations
One way to be unexpected is to place your marketing materials in innovative locations. Instead
of just adding a poster or a flyer to a group of flyers on a bulletin board, do something different.
Think about where people are spending the most time and where they are most likely to be
reading things around them. Some examples:
 Bathroom stalls (don’t lie to yourself: everyone reads them)
 Library cubicles (you’ve probably learned the hard way: everyone procrastinates)
 Backs of seats in lecture halls (these people are just begging for something else to view)
 Chalking the sidewalks
Examples for Library Cubicles:
Slogans
In addition to unexpected locations, it is also good to take advantage of innovative and
unexpected slogans. The goal of this is to make people stop in their tracks and ask themselves,
“Did that say what I thought it said?” It may seem weird but people will remember completely
outrageous marketing slogans.
Examples of flyers:
Target Marketing
Target marketing refers to targeting certain groups on campus and catering your marketing
materials to them. In the Relay world, you want to be constantly expanding your presence on
campus, enlarging your footprint and penetrating untapped markets. Target marketing is a
great way to attack this problem. Identify your weak areas of representation and go after them!
Subtle Marketing
This refers to brand and event exposure even if you don’t know it or intend for it to happen. A
lot of times, people won’t even realize they are seeing the Relay logo or using Relay things, but
it is still there which reinforces the cause.
When appropriate, distribute Relay materials around campus: pens in the bank, pencils and
post-its in the library, mouse pads in the computer lab, your Relay website as the homepage on
university computers.
Blanket the surrounding community with flyers on delivery boxes or in every bag at the
bookstore, donation cans in coffee shops/restaurants, Relay “footprints” in grocery stores,
Relay business cards on store counters.
Word of Mouth Marketing
Although this is always overlooked, we cannot forget about the cheapest and most effective
form of marketing: word of mouth. You should treat word of mouth marketing the way you
would treat team recruitment - get out there and spread the word. This allows you to put a face
on the event and the cause. Make it a point to get personal – by sharing your Relay story and
letting people know why Relay is important to you. Make it a mission to tell one new person
about Relay each week and share this goal with your committee. If everyone joins in, your
event footprint is expanding already! Also be sure to think about t-shirts and Relay gear. Every
day that someone wears Relay apparel, you are marketing your event.
Branding Your Event
To achieve maximum impact make sure that you put the Relay logo and brand on everything.
This will allow you to build brand recognition and create a culture around the brand. However,
this also means that you must work extra hard to maintain the quality of the brand!
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Check and monitor everything that goes out with your brand on it.
Emphasize to all participants the importance of brand quality. Adhere to American
Cancer Society branding standards and try to prevent distortion of the logo.
American Cancer Society market research shows that 96% of the general public
recognizes the Society brand.
Take advantage of all Society provided materials such as stage wrap (trash cans),
footprint chalk stencils, stickers, posters/flyers, and balloons with the Relay logo.
Promotional Activities
Promotional activities are a great way to reinforce and supplement more traditional forms of
on campus marketing that we’ve talked about above. They are very effective for getting the
Relay name out there and maintaining a constant presence on campus.
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Traditional promotional activities – Something as simple as tabling can be done each
week in the student center or other campus hubs. Take advantage of the opportunity to
recruit team captains and pass out promotional materials. If the committee structure
does not allow this type of commitment, recruit team captains to take responsibility for
different weeks and use this time to promote their team fundraisers.
Highly visible and attention grabbing activities - Be creative…everyone likes to have fun!
Ideas include: a sumo wrestling event on the lawn or a “big freeze” – recruiting your
committee and team captains to hold a mass “freeze” in a highly visible public gathering
place on your campus. Don’t forget to wear those Relay shirts!
Relay Blitz Weeks – These blitzes occur during a contained time frame (usually about
one week long) and they are intense Relay promotional periods on campus. They can
include “Jump Start Relay” weeks in the fall or “Paint the Campus Purple” in the spring.
Essentially, it is just an opportunity to place Relay everywhere on campus.
Some blitz activities include:
o Yard signs with cancer facts, statistics, and instructions on how to sign up
o Posters and flyers on and off campus
o Table tents on the tables in the cafeteria and other food areas
o Set up an information booth/table all week long in cafeterias and academic buildings
o Do presentations in the large classrooms on campus. Talk about what Relay is, how to
get involved, etc.
o Put a face on cancer and have student cancer survivors telling their individual stories.
o Wear Relay shirts and other apparel – don’t forget that word of mouth marketing!
o Use car window paint to paint your car windows purple and park them around campus.
o Get permission from the local community to paint business windows purple with Relay
For Life information.
Online Marketing and Your Relay Website
The most underutilized form of marketing is no doubt the Relay Web sites. Each event is given a
Web site but it is your job to use it for marketing and information sharing. The website
framework allows a lot of room for creativity and increased online utilization. If you don’t have
an online chair – a committee member whose job is to take advantage of online marketing
opportunities – be sure to recruit one. They can use technology in many different ways:
Be sure to put your Web site on everything: www.RelayForLife.org/collegename. Your Web site
needs to become the “hub of your Relay event.” Use the homepage to market fundraisers, post
information about TC meetings etc., and share resources with all team captains, participants,
and donors.
 Drive people to visit your Web site by posting information from meetings online instead
of printing handouts. You get to save paper and reinforce your marketing efforts each
time someone visits the site.
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Update your Web site often. This will ensure that people will want to come back and
visit. If the information stays the same for too long, they will not have the incentive to
revisit the site. They won’t feel like they are missing out on anything.
Send out encouraging coaching emails to all participants and team captains. These
emails can include:
 Mission moments that help educate participants on ACS mission.
 New fundraising ideas and opportunities
 Reminders about meetings or fundraising events
 Facebook and Social Networking Sites – As college students, we cannot
underestimate the value added from pages like Facebook and MySpace. Some
obvious uses for these social networking sites:
o Group pages, fan pages, events, etc for sharing information about your
fundraisers, kickoffs, or Relay events.
o Think about changing your Facebook picture to help marketing big events like
kickoff and day of Relay.
o Encourage committee members and friends to do the same in order to up
exposure on mini-feed!
o Work with video production departments or a tech savvy committee member to
develop promotional pieces for your Relay event that can be posted to YouTube.
Also, encourage participants to post video clips from their Relay experience.
o YouTube links can be compiled into a page on your Relay website or embedded
into the homepage for instant marketing.
Use the American Cancer Society Presence on Your Campus
The American Cancer Society may be on your campus in more ways than you are aware of.
Besides Relay you may also have an American Cancer Society research grantee or a recipient of
an American Cancer Society Youth Scholarship. These provide you with resources for speakers
at meetings and the ability to put a face on the fight against cancer and personalize the
movement.
American Cancer Society Research Program
 Since 1993, the dollars raised and used for cancer research have saved an estimated 90
more lives each day from cancer.
 The American Cancer Society’s research program is unique because of its focus on
beginning researchers with the most cutting edge and innovative ideas
 44 of the American Cancer Society funded researchers have gone on to win the Nobel
Prize
 Ten percent of Society research dollars target the poor and underserved population.
American Cancer Society researchers make excellent speakers at kickoffs, meetings,
Relay events.
 Work with your American Cancer Society staff partner to connect with a researcher.
Even if there are no currently funded researchers on your campus there are a large
number of researchers throughout our Division who are ready, willing and eager to
share what they do and thank volunteers for raising funds at any sort of Society event.
Midwest Division Youth Scholarship Program
 Each year, a limited number of scholarships are awarded to childhood cancer survivors
from Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota and Wisconsin who are continuing their education
at a college, university or technical school. The scholarships provide these students the
chance to pursue a degree and achieve their full potential by helping curb the financial
burden often associated with obtaining a higher education.
 A limited number of scholarships are available each year for $1,000.00 each and are paid
directly to the student’s institution of choice, to be applied toward the fall semester tuition.
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In 2010, 75 Youth Scholarships were awarded in the Midwest Division.
Many youth scholarship recipients are willing to share their stories with your Relayers.
Having a youth scholarship recipient and cancer survivor speak puts a face on the fight
against cancer and provides relatable motivation for college Relayers about the
importance of our fight.
Appendix:
Enlarging Our Footprint in Every Community: Relay For
Life Talking Points
Relay For Life is much more than a fundraiser…it is a worldwide movement to end cancer.
Relay For Life not only raises the funds that enable the American Cancer Society to fulfill its
mission to eliminate cancer as a major health concern, it also establishes a living platform for
the face and voice of the cancer patient, survivor and caregiver. Relay For Life gives people
from all walks of life a place to act as change agents and life savers.
It is more important than ever that we continue to invest in the fight against cancer. These are
the messages and this is the story we need to share with our current supporters as well as
those we will be asking to join us as we continue on our journey.
Did you know…
 The American Cancer Society is the single largest non-profit funder of life-saving cancer
research in the world.
 The return on the dollar you give today is much greater because we are standing on the
brink of so many breakthroughs.
 “We can say things today in the fight against cancer that we could not say even three
years ago. What we do today will determine the story we tell three years from now.”
John Seffrin, American Cancer Society Chief Executive Officer
 The American Cancer Society research program is unique because of the focus on
beginning researchers with the most cutting-edge and innovative ideas. Once these
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researchers get started with Society dollars, they can go on and receive funding from
other sources, such as government agencies.
The American Cancer Society has funded 44 Nobel Prize winning researchers.
The American Cancer Society research program has played a role in every major
advance against cancer.
Ten percent of American Cancer Society research dollars target the poor and
underserved population.
Each year, there are many more research grants deemed worthy than there is funding
available. These are called “pay-if” grants and can only be funded if additional donor
dollars become available. Essentially these are answers waiting to happen.
There are better, faster, more humane treatments available now than ever before.
More cancer diagnoses are being avoided altogether through our prevention and early
detection efforts.
The American Cancer Society has set a goal to prevent five million unnecessary deaths
from cancer (more than the total population of South Carolina), prevent six million new
cancer diagnoses (more than the total population of the state of Maryland), and
improve the quality of life for all cancer survivors by the year 2015.
What does all of this mean?
Through the American Cancer Society Relay For Life, the Society is saving lives and creating a
world with less cancer and more birthdays by helping people stay well and get well, by finding
cures, and by fighting back.
Helping people stay well
 We develop guidelines for recommended cancer screenings and nutrition and physical
activity, so people know what tests they need to find cancer early and how to help
prevent the disease.
 We provide tips, tools, and online resources to help people set goals and stay motivated
to eat healthy and maintain an active lifestyle
Helping people get well
 Our phone lines are open anytime, day or night, to connect people with the answers
they need. Each year, we provide support to the nearly one million individuals who call
us at 1-800-227-2345.
 Our Web site, cancer.org, also offers access to the latest information and news on
cancer and helps people locate programs and services in their area.
 With sites at hospitals and treatment centers across the country, our American Cancer
Society Patient Navigator Program provides one-on-one guidance to people facing
cancer through every step of their journey.
Finding cures
 We’ve had a hand in nearly every major cancer breakthrough of the past century,
including confirming the link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer, establishing
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the link between obesity and multiple cancers, developing drugs to treat leukemia and
advanced breast cancer, and showing that mammography is the most effective way to
detect breast cancer.
We’re the largest private funder of cancer research in the US.
We fund researchers with cutting-edge ideas. Of the researchers chosen for Society
funding, 44 have gone on to win the Nobel Prize.
Fighting back
 The majority of Americans are now covered by a smoke-free law, thanks in part to the
efforts of the Society and our nonpartisan advocacy affiliate, the American Cancer
Society Cancer Action NetworkSM (ACS CAN).
 We have helped uninsured, underinsured, and low-income women get breast and
cervical cancer screening tests and follow-up treatment since 1991 and, along with ACS
CAN, we have successfully fought for legislation protecting this care.
Through Relay For Life, you help make the American Cancer Society’s services and progress
possible, and that helps us all move closer to our ultimate goal: a world with less cancer and
more birthdays.
“Every step you take, every dollar you raise, every new member
you recruit helps us get one step closer to a cure.” – Otis
Brawley, American Cancer Society Chief Medical Officer