Contributed by Abigail Biggs | East Paulding DECA, GA
At East Paulding DECA, we were pleasantly challenged when the "Go the Extra" theme was released. Our officer team began to discuss possible campaign themes as soon as possible, a few ideas being pirates (highlighting the X in Extra) and video games, among others.
After much thought and discussion, we happily chose a thrilling race car theme—"Go the Extra Mile"—for our chapter's campaign.
After choosing our campaign theme, brainstorming the chapter t-shirt was the first step. We tried many different designs until one we loved was created. We used a mix of racing concepts, dark greys and bright reds on the back of the T-shirt.
We then campaigned the theme by centering our bulletin boards and posters around the school with race cars, checkered flags and racing courses. Our chapter also promoted this through social media by using our creative minds in our posts. Our VP of Marketing, Alyssa Gurley, and Director of Marketing, Abigail Biggs, created entertaining social media posts, using cars and raceways as a recurring imagery.
For our chapter’s kick-off meeting, our VP of Hospitality, Mattie Kate Ford, and our Director of Hospitality, Peyton Godbout, took in the officers’ and advisors' ideas for decorations and different ways to correlate to the theme. A few things they planned for the meeting were checkered flags, fun sunglasses for our members and themed snacks.
They also organized a fun game for our members and excitedly arranged to have Lightning McQueen as a special guest with the help of our chapter advisors, Halie Bissell and Megan Dupree.
We've received a lot of good feedback from our members and students interested in joining our chapter about the campaign theme.
Within the first two weeks of school, the East Paulding DECA chapter has gained over 200 members. We've seen a specific growth in membership among male members. Our team considered this factor when creating our campaign, as we have seen many female members and wanted to broaden the horizons for all East Paulding students!
Check out more of East Paulding DECA's recruitment campaign here!
