First Person: Student Rep Networks in Action

For most marketers, reaching the heavily targeted, overconsumed, and increasingly diverse audience of college students is quite a challenge. Capturing a piece of college students’ $200 billion spending power is an even greater challenge.

Due to this spending and to the influence they often hold in purchases at home, the college student remains the most sought-after demographic by many of the country’s leading advertisers. The average college student is a constant target for a flurry of advertising messages, even as the ability to reach that student becomes increasingly difficult.

The true challenges faced by any marketer attempting to sell their goods or services to this market are, first, getting students to take notice and, second, getting them to take action. The number of marketing messages aimed at these students has left them numb to most forms of traditional advertising, causing few ads to truly get noticed and resonate in a student’s mind. Even when noticed, a larger problem looms. Few students on campus are leaders, ready to champion an unknown or new product.

To that end, many companies have successfully turned to student representative networks to make an impact. A student network involves the hiring and managing of student representatives on college campuses. Reps are often tasked with executing marketing plans on their campus, educating others through usage, and acting as evangelists to peers and faculty. For instance, my company, Mr. Youth, has created such networks for companies such as Victoria Secret, Microsoft, and JetBlue Airways.

“Companies are discovering what we have known for quite some time: College students cannot be grouped into a single demographic. They vary from college to college, year to year, and group to group. The only way to be meaningful to the masses is to penetrate their individual worlds and deliver a customized messaging to each student direct from his or her peer,” explains Matt Britton, a founding partner of Mr. Youth.

When Microsoft came to Mr. Youth asking for a plan that would drive downloads of its OneNote software on college campuses in just two months, we hired 100 campus leaders on 50 of the country’s largest campuses to represent the brand. These campus leaders provided Microsoft with access to all the largest groups on campus and to professors as well as to the student body. Microsoft student reps were able to give presentations to classes and professors on the benefits of OneNote, they were able to message friends through online groups already established through school and social networks sites, and most important, they were able to use the product and provide their peers with relevant reasons the product would help them as a fellow student at their school.

The results from the program, which ran this past October through December, surpassed Microsoft’s goals, exceeding its desired number of downloads by more than 60%. Additional successes of the program included millions of impressions and news stories generated all across the country by the Microsoft reps.

Another client, JetBlue, wanted to make a big impact on a small budget in its latest focus market, Boston. The result was the creation of CrewBlue, a student rep program first tested in the Boston market. With CrewBlue, JetBlue strived to express the uniqueness of its airline and educate students on its many new destinations from Boston’s Logan Airport. The 20 reps hired were able to throw more than 100 events, generate nearly 2 million impressions, and land 14 news stories.

While using student rep networks can pay off in numerous ways, it is important to ensure that your company or the agency you hire has the infrastructure in place to support a program. At Mr. Youth we credit our success in part to our proprietary portal software that allows us to manage all communications among reps and lets reps blog and share best practices with each other.

While student rep networks aren’t a fit for all marketing goals targeted at college students, their quantifiable value continues to be shown for a variety of industries and clients. As media continue to diversify and students’ options become more abundant, establishing rep networks will be of increasing importance to companies looking to become more relevant and resounding to this influential demographic. Brands that first understand the power of these networks will make their mark on campus.

Brandon Evans is director of national account services at New York-based marketing firm Mr. Youth.