ROLLER DERBY IN THE UNION

Hiring your local roller derby team proves to be an effective marketing scheme: 

Think about it–  A marketing coordinator is constantly competing with clutter.  They spend hours designing a flyer and then put it up next to 100 other flyers designed by fellow student organizations.  They then spend more time creating an email campaign, but then send it into an inbox full of other sweet emails from Etsy, Apple, and the like.  Third, they Facebook and Tweet, but again, find their efforts lost in the sea of information.  On the other hand, a roller derby chick skating in the union will stick-out like a sore thumb for marketing because they are a force not to be reckoned with.

At UMKC, we decided that improv marketing was going to be one more tool to be put under our belt for program advertisment.  We targeted lunch times at the union, since it was the highest trafficked area on campus. Every week we would implement a fast, quirky improv skits to grab everyone's attention...  And after silence was accomplished amongst the students eating lunch, we unnashamedly announced our upcoming event for the night.

Rollerskating in the Union was our first attempt.  Here's what we did:

Step 1: Drink a Red Bull

Step 2: Have an experienced skater roll into the Union Cafe and scream at the top of their lungs as if they are having trouble stopping.

Step 3: Stage "an innocent bystandard" in the cafe, holding four indestructructable props. (we used a lunch tray, silverwear, a plastic plate and a plastic cup

Step 4: Have the roller warrior "accidently" run into the "innocent bystandard"

Step 5: Have the innocent bystandard dramatically throw their tray in the air and create a lot of racket.

Step 6: Seize the moment of silence and, in a loud voice, shout out what your programming council has planned for the evening

Question for ya: How has your school implemented improv marketing to get the word out for events?

INTRODUCTION...WHY USE Q:TIPS?

OK... so that's probably the worse choice of play-on words to kick-off this blog; but who doesn't need a perverbial ear cleaning every once in a while– especially in the area of college programming.  Since a handful of us at Quick Artist were once college students, planning out concerts and lectures (just like you), we thought it would be helpful to pass on our collective wisdom and shed light on our worse mistakes (never book Vanilla Ice... even as a joke) so you can learn, grow, and improve what's going on at your campus.

Also, now that we've worked with colleges from coast to coast in booking concerts, we've seen that some schools do things much better than others.  In the spirit of collegiate learning, we'd like to showcase, highlight and funnel any great ideas implemented by other schools right to the door step of your computer screen. 

Heath McNease & Playdough Freestyle: Biblical Style

We are sending out a free Heath McNease CD to the 20th person that sends us a message via Twitter (QAA:CHURCH), stating the correct number of biblical references made on this recorded freestyle by PLAYDOUGH & HEATH MCNEASE. Props to radioU for hosting a great podcast.

"WED, WHITE, AND WU"- MIXTAPE FROM MCNEASE & PLAYDOUGH

Jetty Rae Singing to Rescue Child Soldiers

We know a lot of churches focus on social justice events, so we thought it would be helpful to feature SOLA GRATIA, a Lutheran community up in Northern, MI that utilizes the creative arts to bring good into the world. JETTY RAE will be pairing up with them on October 9th up in Lake Ann, MI. The focus will be on supporting PROJECT: AK-47, a nonprofit that is commited to rescuing child soldiers.

A big thank you goes out to Justin Grimm for organizing this event. We are thankful for the energy and resources put forth to make this event happen.

If you have a social justice idea or event that could be helpful for other ministries to consider, please comment below with thoughts...