The Quad  won’t stop talking.

 

Leaping off the ground in bright contrasting colors, bombardments of words seize the eye. Scribbled in the same sidewalk chalk found on schoolyard playgrounds, these messages are more than senseless doodles — they carry a purpose that isn’t so playful.

 

These words are meant to promote. As campus clubs and student groups settle into a new semester, they are looking to, once again, market their organizations with sidewalk chalk on the Syracuse University Quad, among other viral tactics.

 

The chalk’s effects are powerful. When SU Outing Club President Lauren Paish and her friends adorned the Quad with fluorescent chalk, inviting students to attend the general interest meeting, they figured the turnout would be good. After all, along with flyers and speaking with students during orientation, the chalk they used was far brighter and more eye-catching than the play chalk of years past.

 

But when Paish and the rest of the Outing Club saw more than 300 students attend the interest meeting on Sept. 7, they had no idea their sidewalk campaign would yield such a strong response.

 

‘I was really surprised, I wasn’t expecting the turnout,’ said Paish, a junior biology and psychology major.

At the meeting, Paish said multiple students told her how the Quad’s scribbled messages piqued their interests in the club. ‘It’s hard to eliminate the other factors,’ Paish said. ‘But the chalk definitely helped.’

 

By using sidewalk chalk as a source of campus marketing, students are tapping into a concentrated area of viral marketing. Viral marketing is a promotional strategy that relies on social networks to generate buzz about something through strong word of mouth.

 

‘With a college-age crowd, if you have something of interest, it will go viral,’ said John Liddy, an entrepreneur in residence at the Syracuse Technology Garden, a business development incubator. Liddy said while talking to students at the Garden last semester, many told him they don’t read through notifications sent to their e-mails and rarely respond to viral marketing attempts through the online social networking website, Facebook. What one student in the discussion did pay attention to, however, was the Quad.

 

‘If you want something to go viral, you have to understand your audience,’ Liddy said. With the Quad receiving some of the heaviest foot traffic on campus, Liddy said students understand their peer audience. The Quad is considered the premiere social network on campus. When students walk through on the way to class, it is almost guaranteed the messages will grab their eyes, he said.

 

‘You’re at a college, you have a Quad, you know that most people walk through it every day. If you have something important to say, then why not utilize the space?’ said Mariel Fiedler, an alumna who organized last semester’s protest against the 2010 SU commencement speaker, Jamie Dimon. During the spring, Fiedler and other protestors covered the Quad with chalked messages and taped flyers to rally student interest in the movement.  

 

‘On a college campus, when you have such a large population using such a small amount of space, it’s easy to think that chalking the Quad or doing things like that are going to help you out the most,’ Fiedler said.

But the window to spread the colored sentiments is small. Rain happens in Syracuse. While groups think the Quad is a useful source of promotion, it can also be the most frustrating.

 

‘Using chalk in SU kind of sucks because it rains so much,’ Paish said. ‘You have to plan ahead so it doesn’t go to waste.’

 

While writing down slogans and advertisements is cost-effective and can lead to a successful promotion, Liddy warns against making it the sole marketing ploy.

 

‘The guerilla marketing methodology is cheap, and you’re going to get what you pay for,’ Liddy said. ‘If it’s your only avenue, you probably won’t be successful.’

 

For Monica Mo, a freshman communications design major, it all comes down to the design. She said while she will look down and pay attention to the vivid messages, it takes more than just colorful words to capture her attention.

 

‘I think it depends on how well they set it up and how appealing it looks,’ Mo said.

 

It doesn’t matter where students are going. Whether it is a class, their dorm rooms or anywhere else, the flamboyant messages on the Quad will be there to meet them. With colorful pictures and words battling for a student’s attention, Fiedler said the Quad is SU’s version of Times Square.

Said Fiedler: ‘It’s like putting up a billboard.’

 

ansteinb@syr.edu

Published on September 13, 2010 at 12:00 pm