School spirit is alive and well and thriving on the Web. Direct mail catalog and Gen-Y membership site Alloy Online (www.alloy.com) proved it this spring when it hosted a monthlong national contest, Alloy Invasion, to find out which school could get the most votes from its students.
North Andover (MA) Middle School, with its 1,000 students, won the contest by pulling in nearly 16,000 votes. That’s because three students egged on their fellow students, hanging banners in the halls, creating an e-mail chain and announcing up-to-the- minute tabulations over the loudspeaker as people voted again and again.
New York-based Alloy hosted the contest, which generated responses from 176,000 teens and 12,618 schools, to test viral marketing. This technique – in which the original recipient of a message passes it along to friends or associates – “is an important vehicle because it’s very cost-effective,” says Joan Rosenstock, Alloy’s director of marketing. And it works.
Alloy plans to use the contest as a model to develop viral marketing for the company.
The winning school, meanwhile, enjoyed an “invasion” on May 30, which included a performance by musical group Nine Days and a fashion show in which students modeled Alloy gear.
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