If there is one thing that harms the various events that get planned on campus, it is substandard marketing.
Student leaders blame poor participation in elections on student apathy and small attendance at events on our status as a commuter campus.
These justifications, however, are merely excuses to gloss over the fact that few people on campus seem to be capable of successfully marketing their events, ideas and projects to the average student.
This phenomenon stretches from the Associated Students of the University of Utah to Greek Row to university administrators to the Union Programming Council-which, in case you didn’t know (and you likely didn’t), is bringing a film and art festival to the Union tonight.
This is not to say that these well-intentioned individuals and groups do not have good ideas-but they defeat themselves by not utilizing effective marketing strategies.
Right now, there is a controversy surrounding the ASUU-proposed plan to take over KUTE radio, based on the idea that ASUU would be able to more effectively market the station.
Yes, KUTE has not marketed itself effectively-but who is to say that ASUU will do any better? In the past, ASUU has held events that no one attended, paid for bands no one came to listen to, and planned dances no one even knew about. And it seems that every time one of these events fails in its intentions, the leaders in charge of it will not accept responsibility for their poor marketing strategies. Rather, they attempt to blame away their failure on everything from our status as a commuter campus to the weather.
If no one accepts responsibility for this ineptitude, we will never fix this problem-and events that no one hears about will continue to be planned, and good ideas and money will continue to go to waste.
It is not impossible to market at the U, as was proven when three write-in candidates won positions in ASUU, despite being up against two other, better-organized campaigns.
If student leaders were to finally acknowledge this problem and accept responsibility for it, we could start actually sharing resources and coming up with a cohesive marketing strategy that every student group on campus could utilize.
There are creative ways to market events to students on campus, and they don’t need to be expensive. From putting up fliers in areas not already smothered in other posters, to sending out invitations on www.facebook.com, to simply asking professors to make announcements in classes-there are avenues that few student leaders have exercised in getting the word out about their events.
If we can’t learn to market events better, we might as well give up on the events themselves-because if no one knows about them, they aren’t doing anyone any good.