Greek Leadership Retreat

August 17-18, 2015

Monday, August 17, 2015

  • Council Members Present: Brianna Werner, Nikki Kramer, Molly Polzin, Kammie Beyer, Ashley Brittain, Alex Simonieg, Hanna Peterson, Briona Thomson,Na Chum, Colby Ackermann, Chris Rife, Akorede Teriba, Steven Clark, Zachary Gunby, Connor Donahue, Walker Johnson
  • John Bulcock, Marissa Hulshizer
  • Chapter Members Present:Michelle Fetter, Courtney Igbo-Ogbonna, Haley Severson, Kaitlyn Kanne, Izzak Bloch, Mitch Condon, DJ Gries, Jesse Aland, David Mangione, Keaton Collas, Hailey Champa, Nicole Johnson, Heather Hines, Aaron Morley, Brad Revier, Jay Costella, Brandon Emanulson, Sam Anderson, Brett Marshall
  • Chapter Members Absent: AXO extra, DX extra, TKE extra, Richard Cochran, SAE extra

8:30am Pi Rho Chi Campus Director Training

10:30am Leave Campus for Camp Patterson

11:00am Arrive at Camp Patterson

11:30am Lunch

12:40pm Introductions and Preview Retreat Agenda

  • Introductions
  • Name
  • Position
  • Chapter
  • House Keeping Items
  • Silence Cell Phones
  • Cabin Clean Up – Pack everything up, clean out vans, and pack up vans before first session in morning.
  • Clean Up Sign Up
  • Schedule is Tentative and may change especially due to weather.
  • During free time everyone is allowed to use water activities. Make sure kayaks are back on shore and life jackets are put away.
  • 4 guest speakers coming in – content experts on what they are discussing so please be courteous to them.
  • Student Event Team is here with us – They elect officers on academic year.

1:00pm Ice Breaker/Team Builder – Marissa

1:10pm Sexual Assault Policy Presentation – Hanna and Connor

  • Sexual Assault and Violence Policy – most Greek Life communities have one so we decided to make one.
  • We would like you to look it over and it will go into effect at the beginning of the semester as an appendixes of the bylaws. If you have any questions let us know.
  • The mission statement was read by Hanna.

1:15pm John Bulcock

  • January Retreat – Crash Course
  • Fall Retreat – Check-in and make sure we are all on the same page and we are ready for the fall semester since it is the craziest semester. For the past three years we have given a topic to this retreat: Recruitment; Risk Management; PR and Marketing.
  • Greek Life has really been through the ringer this past year because of situations that have found their way to the media.
  • How can we promote ourselves in the best way possible and how can we recover from oopses that may have occurred.
  • What is the difference between PR and Marketing??
  • The purple police will be here to ensure the integrity of the universities branding and name is represented. He will also help note how to build a brand, maintain your brand, and have a shelf life with your brand.

1:30pm Session 1 – What is PR & Marketing? – Lenny Koupal

Communications Coordinator for CSU; Liaison for Integrative Marketing

  • Marketing is all about who you are selling too, it is not about you.
  • Rebrand Time: It will take a while; make sure you hit all the steps. Start with a mission statement and launch from there. Get rid of all previous branding efforts to concentrate and solely have this rebrand. Marketing is about showing us in the light that we want people to see us in.
  • “This is what we do for you” not “we do this and this and this”
  • Just redid mission statement and core values of CSU.
  • Pleasant surprises that INVITE, INVOLVE, and INSPIRE.
  • We are here to serve you in the growth process of your organizations and to inspire you in your leadership roles.
  • We work real closely with events scheduling especially if you are using areas for specific uses.
  • Your first stop is Events Scheduling!!!
  • Policies:
  • Primary reasons for our Posting Policies:
  • This is your building. We don’t want to see it get damaged.
  • Aesthetics. While we want this to be your living room, we also want it to be the front door to the University.
  • Non-Permanent Posting - SAF funded; Student Events Team, Greek Life, and RSO activities will receive priority posting privileges.
  • Publicity Validation and Posting – Posters and other printed publicity intended for placement within the Centennial Student Union MUST BE VALIDATED with a “Posted” Date Stamp administered in CSU 220.
  • Decorations: Scheduling should include reserving time for decorating as well as post event cleanup.
  • No decorations may be nailed, tacked or self-adhered to the walls, floors or part of water. When approved, BLUE MASKING TAPE is the only acceptable.
  • Banners can only be 3 feet tall!!!
  • No GLITTER!!! May have glitter paint.
  • Sign Holder Framers (21x27) – (18x24 gets two posters from 24x36 format)
  • Lenny suggest doing the 18x24!! 
  • No Sandwich Boards
  • Reserved through Events Scheduling (CSU 219)
  • Eight locations.
  • Reserved for up to 7 days with a limit of one location per organization.
  • Boards must have attached approval slip.
  • Info must meet University branding standards.
  • Banners
  • Banner spaces around the stairwell opening and other designated areas reserved through Scheduling.
  • A special request to the Communications Coordinator must be made for banners hanging from the stairwell openings.
  • Ceiling Banners
  • Are approved only for displaying educational content surrounding an event.
  • Approved by Facilities Director or Communications Coordinator.
  • Display Cases
  • Three display cases by Student Activities can be reserved through Scheduling on a first-come, first-served basis.
  • Display cases may be reserved for a period of two weeks, with a limit of one week, per organization. Reservations can be extended one additional two-week period if available.
  • Digital Signage
  • Flatscreens in the CSU offer digital signage for promoting Student Activities and events in the CSU.
  • Currently posting jpeg images or PowerPoint slides.
  • Items can be posted one week prior to the event.
  • Exterior Digital Boards
  • Similar one week restrictions.
  • Priority to Student Activities and Greek Life.
  • Exemptions/Exceptions
  • Student Senate elections and Homecoming activities
  • Graphic Request Form
  • Deadlines
  • All items must be submitted at least two weeks prior to posting/use of publication
  • Particularly essential during high volume times such as Welcome Week and Homecoming
  • CAN (Captivated Audience Newsletter), inSIDER, and Social Media
  • Facebook: facebook.com/CentennialStudentUnion
  • Twitter: twitter.com/CSUSerendipity
  • Instagram: instagram.com/csu_serendipity/
  • YouTube: CSUSerendipity
  • What is the difference between PR and Marketing?
  • Public Relations – how you tell people about items. It really gets to the point of the message and creating that public image.
  • Marketing – taking a step back and how are you strategically going to shape that product or event. What is the message and who do you want getting that message?
  • Don’t bury the date!!!
  • Special Use Request
  • Poster Graphic Approval
  • Questions:
  • Akorede Teriba: Are you in charge of the digital signage in the academic buildings?
  • No, not yet. Something that is in the works is getting the digital signage all on the same program throughout campus instead of academic buildings and CSU running their own.
  • John Bulcock: All university master calendar: if you are hosting an event that is open to the public you will need to include an extra description of it to be included on the calendar.
  • Zach Gunby: How should fraternities be marketing with all the scandals occurring?
  • Letters Today. Leaders Tomorrow.
  • Philanthropic, Community Based, Stories
  • John Bulcock: What is your chapter’s image? What would your chapter be known for? How do you keep yourselves in the spotlight? Are you doing pre event stories and post event stories? Are you sharing your statistics with the outside communities?
  • Lenny Koupal: This is what is special about us. What is the calling card for your specific fraternity or sorority? How do you approach recruitment differently than this chapter? Do you have news releases going out to the general community? Press releases should be kept short and only given the facts.
  • Dan Benson: Student Affairs Newsletter and Campus Newsletter
  • Steven and Ashley are liaisons for that. It should be in the chapter report that you submit each month.

15 minute break

2:45pm Session 2 – Branding Principles – Jeff Iseminger (Alumni Foundation Center)

Associate Vice President for University Advertising & Integration

  • The Integrated Marketing Team strengthens the parent brandand its sub-brands through two primary enterprises.
  • Internally, produce marketing plans for University clients (more than 200 plans in past 10 years)
  • Externally, advertise the University brand through multiple media.
  • The following principles are based on these assumptions:
  • Marketing is a professional discipline with its own body of knowledge.
  • That body of knowledge is grounded in decades of empirical research.
  • Awareness must precede choice, and awareness is largely driven by marketing.
  • When I make these points, think about your own chapter. Who are you trying to reach? These principles will help you!!
  • 1. Marketing aims to lodge a differentiating idea in the mind of the chooser.
  • Only so much room in somebody’s head for a brand.
  • If you have an average product with great marketing, it is much better than having average marketing and a great product.
  • 2. To help achieve differentiation, we want to be on a two-run ladder – our brand position – in the minds of Minnesotans along with the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. We’re the perfect pair, because we’re so different:
  • Mid-size vs. mega-size
  • Faculty-taught courses vs. graduate student-taught
  • Focus on undergraduate research vs. graduate students and faculty
  • Main campus in friendly mid-size community vs. belly of the beast
  • 3. To help us land on that two-rung ladder, we express our brand primarily as benefits to the chooser, not features, which must always be translated into BENEFITS. These benefits offer both practical relevance and emotional resonance to the chooser (emotion “breaks ties”).
  • 4. We express benefits by telling true and unique stories that focus on individuals, instead of undifferentiated blather about a university with happy students romping across green grass and holding beakers in labs.
  • 5. By focusing on unique individuals, we decrease our chances of becoming a commodity (chosen on the basis of price or proximity, for example) and increase our chances of being chosen because we’re MSU, Mankato.
  • 6. We knit our stories together through certain repetitive elements that act as compelling recognition triggers that help make our brand memorable:
  • Name, colors, tagline (Big ideas. Real-world thinking.)
  • Elastic so can pour new content into it.
  • Consistent music score, voice talent, and background for TV spots
  • 7. Simplicity, supported by powerful creatives, is a linchpin of our storytelling.
  • Ex: voice was stripped out and only a camera was used.
  • 8. We use data whenever possible to choose the channels for our storytelling.
  • What academic colleges are in your chapter?
  • Veterans or military men in a specific chapter?
  • Specific locations??
  • 9. All of MSU, Mankato’s marketing should be integrated in terms of core messages and graphic standards. Fracture marketing produces a fractured image of our brand in the mind of the chooser.
  • 10. Integrated marketing  brand coherence  increased awareness
  • You want to produce brand coherence not brand incoherence which is produced by integrated marketing. Increased awareness occurs form repeated exposure to the brand coherence.
  • “Differentiation…is not simply product dependent. Products can differentiate themselves on quality and availability, but generally they are differentiated on awareness.”
  • “Selling Higher Education,” Association for the Study of Higher Education
  • Questions:
  • Brandon Emanulson: Why are the university and athletics brand so different?
  • I was told that athletics chose not to have their brand change and to be separate from the university. They generate enough money independently. There is no rational reason for that to occur.
  • Akorede Teriba: Which way works better: having people on the floor first and then social media or vice versa?
  • Neither. They should be done at the same time and coherently.
  • Zach Gunby: What do you see the U of M doing well and what can we model from them?
  • The U of M is chief Achilles heel because it has so many expressions from its campaign themes. They do not really have coherence – Driven to Discover. Problem: reflects only part of mission: to do research
  • Na Chum: When trying to find each group’s niche or unique aspects of each group do you have some questions we can ask ourselves?
  • Tell individual stories – nobody else can claim them.
  • Informal conversation and ask chapter members how you think we are different and why you chose your chapter over others. Are there consistencies?
  • Uniqueness – is there a theme??? If you tease out a common core experience of your chapter and market that out as a theme you will be ahead of competitors.
  • We have a family feeling. In what way do you concretely support someone’s academic experience? What way do you interact with the broader university such as advising staff or faculty staff.
  • If you would like to talk to us or any one of our staff of how you could kick start or refresh your brand we are open for that. I think that is the best advice we could give you.

30 minute break

4:15pm Session 3 – Engaging Local Media – Dan Benson

Director of Media Relations

  • How many of you have been involved in Public Relations or Communications Work?
  • How many of you are mass media majors?
  • If it is television or radio they are trying to attract viewers or listeners. If it is newspapers they are trying to sell newspapers.
  • You need events that are going to attract the correct audience.
  • What is it that makes something interesting?
  • There are news values.
  • Certain elements make a story/event news worthy: unique, is it something that has been done before, does it involve a public individual (entertainer, athlete, etc)
  • Examples of Headlines/News in the Past
  • Recommendations:
  • Keep KMSU and reporter informed of events.
  • Outline the big events during the year:
  • Ex: Greek Week, Philanthropy Events, etc
  • Jessica Bies at Free Press (designated for Education) – inform her about what is going on in Greek Life *** VP of PR and Marketing for PHC/IFC
  • KEYC – more general assignments and more current
  • No more than 10 days in advance, probably 4-7 days in advance.
  • Tell them what they want to come and check out in an email.
  • Wendy Wild – News Director – Radio 102.7
  • What would you be interested in covering??
  • Local Music Stations – get on their morning shows.
  • KTOE: Radio Mankato
  • Manager: Jo Bailey
  • Digity Radio – KEEZ, KYSM, KRBI, KMKO
  • 507-345-4646
  • Questions:
  • John Bulcock: Should they send a press release about the upcoming event or results of the event or both.
  • Generally speaking, I would send out a release ahead of time and giving the media the option to come cover it themselves.

5:00pm Play Time and Dinner Prep

6:15pm Dinner

7:30pm Session 4 – Social Media Principles and Practices – Lindsey Tollesfson

Director of Web Marketing

If you have big events you want me to share on the university’s page feel free to email me and I will try to do that.

mnsu.edu/social – great resource with tips and tricks

  • Over 1 billion strong on Facebook making it the third strongest country in the world.
  • Social Media impacts off-line relationships as well as online relationships.
  • 92% of children under the age of 2 have a digital shadow.
  • Every second someone new joins LinkedIn.
  • YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world.
  • 93% of marketers use social media for business.
  • Social Proximity
  • How close your social connections are to your prospective followers.
  • You are always growing your network of social connections.
  • Search Engine Influence
  • Shared content helps link-building.
  • Google and Twitter entered an agreement so hashtags are key words now.
  • Easier to engage the community.
  • Creating a Social Media Plan
  • What are your goals as an organization?
  • Attract new members, share news, connect with the community, etc
  • Who is your audience?
  • You probably will never appeal to everyone and that is okay.
  • Target your content to your niche audience makes your content more relevant and interesting.
  • What are you trying to communicate and how will you communicate it?
  • Each social media site says something different about how you are trying to communicate.
  • YouTube: This is what I encourage individuals to do. You can share videos on Facebook and Twitter from YouTube.
  • Facebook: If you only have time for one search engine use Facebook.
  • Bitly and other engines can shorten URLs to take up less characters.
  • How should you brand yourself?
  • If you can fit both your organization and the university’s name more followers will be able to follow you.
  • Use a handle consistently across platforms. It is easier for people to find you.
  • Use captivating photos especially of members as profile and cover photos to help show people that they can imagine themselves in the organization.
  • Can use the approved University logo.
  • John Bulcock: branding example: use sigma sigma sigma mnsu instead of mnsu epsilon rho because outsiders will not understand the extra chapter designation.
  • Drive Traffic
  • A few easy ways to start promoting your page without spending money.
  • Add links and icons to social media pages from website or MavSync page
  • Include social media URLs in email signature
  • Connect with other social media users on campus and ask to share content
  • Post frequently and respond to engaged customers.
  • Share relevant info from their pages too. Help leverage each other’s stories.
  • It is better to not have a presence than an outdated presence.
  • Facebook: twice a week
  • Twitter: once a day
  • Take a few minutes to fill out the Social Media Planning Worksheet.
  • What is your organization’s objective?
  • Recruitment
  • Dance Marathon – Raise Awareness
  • Inform Others
  • Positive Exposure
  • Brand yourself
  • Awareness Weeks/Campaigns
  • Attendance Motivatoin
  • Engage
  • Who is your organization’s target audience(s)?
  • Alumni
  • Propective Members
  • Local Community
  • Incoming Freshman and Transfer Students
  • Media/News
  • Other RSOs
  • College Students
  • Families
  • What type of messaging would best connect with your organization’s audience(s)?
  • How much time per day will your organization dedicate to social media?
  • Which social media sites will your organization use?
  • What ideas for messaging would best connect with my organization’s audience(s)?
  • Write down five ideas of different posts you can make.
  • Event information
  • Children’s stories
  • Show don’t tell through photos and videos
  • Videos of bid day activities
  • Statistics
  • Personal Testimonies
  • National Videos – Always Wearing Your Letters
  • Throwback Thursdays – from way back when
  • Accomplishments
  • Alumni Spotlight – Where are they now?
  • Greek Member Spotlights
  • Connect Instagram account with Facebook and Twitter.
  • Put icons and links on website or even on a signature of your e-mail.

8:15pm Session 5 – Processing Time for Chapter Leaders – Brie & Na