Mr. Wyview: A Brilliant Publicity Scheme

Context: Part of my job with the BYU Residence Halls Association (RHA) is to train the three area councils (one student council-type organization for each of the three areas: Helaman Halls, Heritage Halls, and Wyview Park). In January, we took the councils up to Spring Haven (a BYU-owned facility in Hobble Creek Canyon) for a winter training retreat, and I got to teach them about effectively publicizing their programs. During the Fall semester, the councils had put up some pretty pathetic publicity (some flyers didn’t even include times and locations), so it was my assignment to give the training necessary to avoid pathetic publicity this winter semester. I must have done a pretty good job because Wyview Park put on a mock-pageant entitled Mr. Wyview: Is it in You? And they did a pretty darn good job if I do say so myself.

Summary: The first round of publicity came out two weeks before the program. It included a date, time, and place, and included a parody of the well-known Gatorade slogan: “Is it In You?” They used an orange lightening bolt similar (but not the exact same—wouldn’t want to break copyright laws) as a kind of logo for the flyer. On the flyers they tacked in front of each girls’ apartment in Wyview, they included a line about encouraging their guy friends to fill out a pageant application. On the boys apartments, they tacked a paper application along with the flyer. Their next round of publicity came out a week before the Mr. Wyview Pageant. For this publicity blitz they used donated Burger King Crowns with quarter-sized flyers showing the date, time, and slogan of the program. They stapled the crowns to the stair-railings of every stairwell in Wyview. The third publicity round was the t-shirts they designed. The t-shirts showed the orange lightening bolt on the front with the words “Mr. Wyview: Is it in You?,” and on the back the name, date, time, and location of the event. They gave the t-shirts to every RA in Wyview, each Wyview council member, and then each council member gave away three t-shirts to students living in Wyview. Everyone who was given a shirt was asked to wear it twice during the week leading up to the event so people would see the shirts and the program would be publicized. The event was jam-packed full of people. In fact, there weren’t nearly enough seats, and for the first time in RHA history, they ran out of refreshments.

Analysis: The Wyview council did several notable things with this publicity scheme. First, they chose a well-known slogan and logo. Normally, when people see those words they think, Gatorade. In my mind, I also see the Gatorade commercials with athletes sweating Gatorade. So, when paired with a mens’ mock beauty pageant, the slogan implies a competition (perhaps athletic) for the status of Mr. Wyview. Slogans and logos taken out of context are also eye-catching and curiosity-piquing. Second, they used Burger King Crowns, which have happy food connotations for many, to publicize an event in which the winner would be crowned. When somebody sees a Burger King Crown stapled to their stairwell, they stop and look…after all, it could be Burger King coupons or something associated with free food—always a good angle to take with college students. Third, the t-shirt publicity. Let’s face it: everybody loves a free t-shirt, and what better publicity is there than t-shirt-wearing, living, walking, talking people? Besides, the giving of free t-shirts before an event implies that perhaps more free things will be given at the event itself—again, always a good angle to take with college students.

Educational Context: If, for some strange reason, I were to discuss this publicity scheme with my students some day (…I guess it’s plausible that I could be teaching a publicity workshop again at some point, so I suppose I could use this as an example), we could talk about the different mediums this council used to publicize. They took objects (Burger King Crowns) and took them out of their contexts to grab the attention of passers-by. They used well-known objects and slogans to publicize a little known event—but they also took a chance that some people might not recognize the significance of those objects and slogans. Why was this worth the risk? Could they have picked a more universal slogan? What does this say about how media-savvy the residents of Wyview Park are (we’re assuming, based on the high attendance, that most of them recognized the slogan)? Perhaps I would even create a make believe event for which my students would be assigned to design a publicity scheme. I could probably even modify this for my students to publicize an event from a novel or short story. Hmm…I bet they could come up with some pretty interesting ideas for publicizing “the lottery” from Shirley Jackson’s short story…