Following queues from the corporate sector, there are two aims for a brand or company (or DUCK):

• Increased awareness of a brand
• Incresaed participation, involvement, or, more plainly, spending cash with that brand.

Point 1 is a fait acompli for DUCK. Point 2 is where the work is. Well, almost. Let’s take a quick look at the awareness challenge…

Awareness

Because every student in Durham is on the mailing list, almost everyone has heard of DUCK (they may not know what it is about, though!). As many people voted for DUCK manager as Student Union President in the last elections. That’s encouraging.

Folks may not know what DUCK actually does (well, who does?) though. Especially with freshers’ it’s important to associate the word DUCK with it’s meaning and purpose; or just ‘hilarious idiocy’. Examples:

• Info sheets for freshers’ explaining the acronym
• Items in the freshers’ handbook
• Strong association between DUCK and fun stuff- e.g. getting people to wear DUCK t-shirts when they do crazy stuff.
• Making sure people know why they’re being emailed weekly. More info on what the money achieves, the people and charities it helps, is definitely something to go on the to-do list.

So, when people have heard of DUCK, they can spell it, they know what it does, the next step is…

Involvement

The catch-phrase ‘Get involved’ is bona-fida brilliant: encouraging participation with an already active body. People are aware, but passive. Phrases like ‘Do DUCK’ hammer the point home.

Converting people from the bystander to the participator is where the real marketing in DUCK needs to take place. Here are some in-roads to participation:

• • Involvement that’s easy:

If people have felt involved in a DUCK event (like a party just by attending, or by helping put up posters), it’s less of a jump to do something else under the DUCK banner. Get folks to do easy stuff for DUCK like putting up posters and they’ll pick up bigger stuff (like rag-raiding) of their own accord. Hopefully.

Make sure there are simple, easy, non-committed roles obviously available in DUCK

• • Invovlement that’s personally urged

It’s easy to ignore a poster. Or even appreciate it but don’t do anything. It’s harder to say no to a person, a face. Get someone with lots of friends to organise a rag raid. Find the most persuasive, most gobbiest fresher, and target all your marketing attention on them.

Use friends. Facebook, the like.

• • Involvement that’s beneficial for the participant

This is the idea behind expeditions: the people doing the fundraising benefit. Especially initial activities with DUCK need to be fun, something that can be talked (/boasted) about, and something participants either get personal benefit from, or see obvious benefit to the recipient.

Give a benefit.

(This principle is also why selling rubbish at high cost works, and collecting small amounts for nothing doesn’t).