Promo vid I made in After Effects for the Macaulay Arts Night event I threw with my friend Mary Williams on March 6th. The vid helped both Septopus and our event page gain a pretty big following.
To promote Macaulay Arts Night, I took Septopus to Facebook with the help of co-director Mary Williams. What we found is that using characters is an extremely effective way to spread event awareness. Why? People find characters entertaining to interact with. They won’t just skim over important messages broadcasted by the character, because they’re fun to read! The Septopus now has over 500 Facebook friends – most of them in the Macaulay Honors College – so we’ll probably continue to use him to promote future endeavors. His British persona and love of scholarship turned out to be an unexpected viral hit.
The Septopus’s activity feed, showing updates and comments from Facebook friends. It also features the Arts Night website, which hosts pictures of the event.
Septopus’s personal info. As you can see, we have him linking to other student initiatives, like the Macaulay Literati Club.
Septopus in his worldly travels.
An entertaining interaction between Septopus and Macaulay student and Arts Night contributor, Gloria Cavallero.
In addition to Septopus, we also created a Facebook group and Facebook event to help mobilize contributors, curators, and attendees. The online campaign, along with the efforts of volunteer curators and my co-director Mary helped make Arts Night a success with attendees numbering in the hundreds.
To attract creative submissions for Macaulay Arts Night, I targeted Macaulay Honors students by propagandizing our honors lounge. In addition, the team and I garnered submissions with Facebook and a central Gmail account accessible by all volunteer curators. The Gmail aspect turned out to be indispensable: it allowed us to organize and sort submissions through labels, filters, and a google doc spreadsheet database; create an online submission form; and publish submission guidelines.
Giant block poster made from 9 pieces of printer paper. To the right are some smaller flyers for students to take.
I set the default home page on every computer to the Septopus video.
Some book-holders I set up and filled with flyers.
Flyer hung from the ceiling with masking tape.
I hung it up here for the night contrast between the pink background and the bright green foreground.
A picture of Septopus I taped up on an honors lounge window from outside. Sadly, nobody let him in.
Septopus-inspired art by Gerardo Sevilla. Me being my usual doofus self below. In the background on the left you’ll find a TV displaying a slideshow created by Jocelyne Jeannot. It featured all the visual works submitted by students.
Flyers for the Macaulay Arts Night event I helped run. The one on the bottom was the color, internet version, designed specifically for catching a user’s eye as a Facebook thumbnail. The flyers feature the Septopus silloutted in white (by that point, the shape of the Septopus had become familiar to pretty much anyone who would see the flyer).
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