Nasty Conjugation

Hey everyone. I meant to post this a while ago, but then things were uncertain and I didn’t. It’s the essay I wrote for my Fellowship application - I told myself I’d share it if I got the dang thing, and since originally I didn’t get it I just forgot. But what do you know! I am a Fellow now! So here’s the essay. I was pretty proud of it, and there’s a little part of me that hopes it’s the reason they decided to give me the award.

As an undergraduate at Florida State I was heavily involved in WVFS Tallahassee, the student radio station. While working in their public relations department I began to notice a problem: we always seemed to attract the same crowd of people. Everyone at station-sponsored events either worked at the station or knew someone who did. Where was the point in promoting ourselves when we were only preaching to the choir? A radio station needs new listeners to remain vital, so I took matters into my own hands.

I started going to the Student Union on Wednesdays to take advantage of the crowded weekly flea market. In a suit and tie, waving a picket sign bearing the station’s information, I stood on a park bench across from the Evangelical preachers and began to spread the gospel of college radio. After a month of the preacher routine I switched costumes and tactics: dressed as a ninja and wielding a WVFS flag, I brought a CD player and danced with passers-by while handing out flyers. The routine caught on and other DJs got involved, donning robot suits or zombie makeup and staging epic battles as PR volunteers handed out flyers and stickers. The point, as I saw it, was to shake people out of their daily routine and bypass their resistance to traditional advertising. Unfortunately, when I left FSU to teach English in Japan the campaign faded away.

During my time abroad it came to my attention that my unorthodox marketing tactics were not merely the antics of a bored undergrad. Big companies were starting to do the same thing I had done by staging guerilla campaigns in cities around the world. When I started my Master’s program, I decided to try and figure out what kind of an impact these campaigns actually make. Since it had never been addressed academically, I suggested to my Research Methods class that we create and test our own non-traditional campaign. Our group borrowed from a number of existing studies in order to create a theoretical framework through which we would analyze our findings. Though most Communication research is done in labs, we decided to buck the trend and take our study into the field. I once again descended upon the Union, in costume and wielding a picket sign, only this time I was backed up by a tiny army of undergraduate surveyors, a group of my graduate peers, and a semester’s worth of research.

Though the study was only a pre-test, it laid the foundation for further research into a new kind of marketing that has received little to no basic academic scrutiny. From grassroots initiatives to political campaigns, guerilla tactics have a wide range of application outside the scope of mere product advertising. And aside from the data we gathered (nearly two hundred survey responses), the project taught me that there doesn’t need to be a disconnect between what I enjoy and what I study in school.

As an undergraduate at Florida State I was on the Dean’s list every semester. I was recognized in both the Communication and Japanese departments as the outstanding student of 2005. I graduated magna cum laude in the Spring of 2005. But when I look back at my achievements, I am most proud of the times I spent in the Union with a mask over my face, waving a flag, and unabashedly giving everything I had for something I loved. I didn’t come back to Florida State to cultivate a new GPA and earn another expensive piece of paper. Those things are artificial. I came back to learn how to create something significant, to ask questions and avoid complacency. What I’m seeking in my graduate work is the opportunity to take an idea and make it into something real. To that end, this fellowship will give me the support I need to earnestly get to work.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 7:57 pm and is filed under Essays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.