Follow-Up Friday: Are the Posters Still Posted?

Today was the day I went back to Marquette and UW-Milwaukee to see how many of the Faye posters I'd put up one week ago were still hanging.  I wasn't sure what to expect.  I figured if all of the posters had been taken down, it meant one of two things.  Either the image on the poster was too risque for public posting and this advertising channel wasn't going to be effective, or else the public posting boards were cleared every weekend and re-posting earlier in the week would be necessary to have a decent chance of students noticing the poster and acting on it.

My first stop at Marquette was the student union, where I'd put up three posters last Friday.  My heart sort of sunk when I discovered that all three had been taken down.  Then I felt somewhat better when I noticed that two of them were on boards that clearly stated "These boards are cleaned every week."  OK, that explains those.  The third one, however, had been in the student coffee shop where no such notice existed.  I decided to put one poster up on the board that said it was cleared every week, and leave the coffee shop alone for now.

My tour of the rest of the campus revealed that all of the Faye posters at Marquette had been removed with the exception of one – in the Physics building.  I wound up replacing the posters in the Health Sciences, Language, and Journalism buildings, and decided that I would stop by on Monday afternoon to see if any of those five posters was still there.  If not, I'll just explore a possible student newspaper ad and let it be.  If the posters are still up, I'll put up some more as well, and still explore the student newspaper ad.

I then went to UWM.  My first stop was the 8th Note coffee shop in the Student Union, and I was stoked to see the Faye poster was still up!  Awesome!  I then went to Bolton Hall, and the two posters I'd put up one week earlier were also still there!  Three for three!  The next stop was the Lubar Business Building.  No poster.  Curtin Writing Building.  No poster.  Pearse Communication Building – poster still there!  Urban Planning – neither of the two posters were up.  Lapham Geosciences.  No poster.  Chemistry Building – still there!  Engineering.  Gone.

So the final tally was:  MU: 1 of 10 posters still up = 10%.  UWM: 5 of 11 = 45%.

OK, so the posters at UWM survived better than at MU.  Why?  Public university versus private university?  Non-Jesuit school versus Jesuit school?  Primarily commuter school versus primarily non-commuter school?  Luck?

The answer is probably some of each.  I still believe the posters are an important element of the PR strategy for Flesh Wound at the college campus level.  Here's what I'm going to do.

On Monday, I'll swing through MU and UWM again to see if there is a 'weekend sweep' of the boards where the posters had been taken down.  If they are gone, I'll repost them.  I will call the student newspapers and find out about advertising rates, and follow up with ads if possible.  I will put more info in the ad than is on the poster, but not much.  Probably something to let people know FW is a book and the site contains a blog.

Next Tuesday, I'll go up to UW-Oshkosh and do an initial posting.  On Wednesday, I'll revisit Whitewater and perhaps Madison and see how those posters have fared.  I'll also inquire as to advertising rates in the student newspapers there.

The other measure of effectiveness for the poster campaign is the number of hits to the FWTB website.  Since I started putting up posters, that site has had 30 hits.  Not huge.  Not zero.  I think it is too early to conclude anything about the effectiveness of the posters.  But 30 is where we stand right now.  There have been 2 new user registrations on the site, which is a third measure of overall interest.  I'm not concerned yet, it's still early days.

This sort of PR is fun for me, and I'm going to stay with it for now.  Christmas, amazingly, is six weeks away.  I think Flesh Wound would make an excellent gift for the open-minded, interesting adults on your list!    Read something today that makes you nervous.  Have a terrific weekend, and thanks for reading!  -Jon