Ole Miss has a parking problem. While that may not come as a shock to many, it’s high time we admit it – it’s been an issue for students, faculty, staff, and sports fans for well over ten years and will continue to be such as long as our institution continues to grow. These growing pains can be a headache for everyone who attempts to travel on campus, but it presented a unique opportunity for our group (University Communications) when we were approached by the Department of Parking and Transportation in late 2012 to communicate parking changes to the public.
Our mission was simple: tell student, faculty, staff, and any other groups that may come to Ole Miss that parking on campus is changing with the start of the 2013 Fall semester. As you may have guessed, it’s a tall task to ask a Public Relations group to communicate a message that no one wants to hear. But instead of taking the age-old PR approach of e-mail blasts and press releases, we decided on a different route.
The group most important to reach was, you guessed it, our students. And how do you reach students? You need to be funny and you need to make your message one that is easy to be shared. After much hair-pulling and second-guessing ourselves, we ran with an idea that we were sure would turn heads – we should hit a student with a golf cart. After saying that, I’ll preface the following by saying that no students were harmed during this video. In true blog fashion, I’ll give you the dessert before the entree:
Albeit a bit different than most PR approaches, this video received more than 2,500 views on YouTube. Visits to the Parking and Transportation website increased almost instantly. Granted, many people were looking for the video in which “Dr. Cole runs over a student,” but we accomplished our goals: 1) be funny, 2) create a video that would be shared and 3) create awareness for Park & Ride.
Park and Ride Comments
We received a ton of positive comments. Our public seemed to appreciate the fact that we understood the issues of the average person (because heck, we have to find parking on campus, too!) and we used humor to communicate that message.
NOTE: This video was actually the third in a campaign of three videos about changes to parking on campus. Check out our previous two videos: Park & Ride and Skip the Lines.