When it comes to marketing your DECA chapter, it’s more than just promotion. It’s about creating visibility and connection – just what East Paulding DECA did with its “Bee The One” theme for the 2024-25 school year.
After hearing about DECA’s Be The One theme, the East Paulding DECA officers sat down to plan for their year, and the first step was designing their chapter t-shirt. Their brainstorming developed a shirt with a bee included, and from there, the idea to transform the theme into “Bee The One” was born.
From there, the officers found ways to incorporate the Bee idea throughout the rest of the year, including having it as part of the monthly chapter meetings. This included BEE Thankful for their November meeting, BEE Comfy for January’s pajama party-themed meeting, and BEE Lucky for their March meeting.
Executive officer Alyssa Gurley and chapter advisors Haile Bissell and Megan Dupree all agreed that these fun and engaging themes for chapter meetings were crucial to building up their chapter membership for the year.
“We want to give members something to look forward to at these meetings and find fun ways to get them there,” Alyssa shared.
The team also decided this year to recognize students, teachers and community leaders who were “Beeing the Ones” for their chapter. Each month, DECA members could nominate individuals they saw going out of their way to support the East Paulding DECA chapter by presenting them with a small bee token. Nominees were shared on the East Paulding DECA Instagram page, and in April, every nominee was invited to attend a special end-of-the-year banquet.
“Our goal with the theme was to create more chapter engagement,” explained Alyssa, “and we couldn’t have been more pleased with the results.”
Almost immediately, the chapter members embraced the Bee The One theme by completely wiping the chapter out of their Bee The One t-shirts. Beyond that, the chapter saw incredible growth, achieving its largest membership since it started 34 years ago. EPHS DECA was also awarded the title of 8th largest chapter in their association for the 2024-25 year.
So what helped make their Bee The One campaign so successful? DECA advisor Haile Bissell believes it was the ownership the chapter officers had in executing the idea.
“The officers owned the creativity and took off running with the ideas. It’s their chapter, so I like to give them the freedom to be in charge of how they want to see their year going.”
Bissell’s other tip for a successful year-long campaign is to focus on what your chapter is already doing well and not try to add more work for your officers or members.
Alyssa and her officer team are now focusing their efforts on planning the 2025-26 year. While they do not have a new theme just yet, they are excited to keep the momentum of the “Bee The One” campaign going to see even more growth in membership and engagement.
BEE sure to follow East Paulding DECA on Instagram and Facebook.
