One of the things about student brand ambassador programs that nobody talks about is that brands usually hire just one or two students to complete an entire campus marketing project. Recruitment is a pain in the butt for brands, because it can take forever and a day to find quality brand reps who won’t quit in the middle of a campaign.
So brands often settle for one brand ambassador they think will stick through an extended program and pray they’ll work out.
But the solo student rep now has to research and collect contact information, secure permission to set up a table, handle event logistics, promote the event, distribute flyers at the event, and clean up afterwards. Often without adequate support from the brand. That’s a crazy amount of work for one full-time student to handle on their own—especially if they hit roadblocks along the way.
So what often happens is they ditch the project halfway through, and the brand is left holding the bag. The campaign falls apart or never happens, and the whole thing was a wasted effort.
Shooting Dice with Just One Brand Ambassador
It’s no problem to hire one student rep for single, simple tasks. But when you hire just one or two student reps for an extended campaign, here’s what you can expect:
No backup. If your student rep gets sick, quits, or runs into an obstacle, your entire campaign has blown up in your face.
Slow campaign. If you’re relying on a couple of people to complete multiple tasks, you’ve got a wait ahead of you. But if you had a couple dozen students, you could divide and conquer!
Less exposure. Running a sampling campaign? Then you’re limited to just one spot on campus at a time. With 10 or 20 students, you could have easily hit every corner of a large campus in an afternoon.
Constant recruiting. You might think you’re cutting back on your recruiting efforts by hiring a couple of students, but when they get discouraged and quit, you’ll find yourself hunting for help all over again. With a batch of students, you’re lightening the load, which means they’ll enjoy the work—and come back for more. That’s less recruiting for you in the long run.
So why would you rely on one or two students when you can use 10 or 20? With a dozen student brand ambassadors at each campus, you can distribute the tasks into bite size chunks—either assign each person one or two tasks, or all of the students doing many tasks, but in smaller doses.
Brand Rep Recruitment that Works
That’s how we handled a campaign with an international beverage company. For their extended campus marketing program, we hired 25 students for sampling events over the course of a year to ensure that reps were available during specific dates. Often we hired five student reps at a time.
The program was a tremendous success—we successfully staffed every event the client needed, and over the course of the semester our students handed out over 15,000 bottles. Our client was very happy with the results, and our brand ambassadors were enthusiastic about their roles in the campaign.
So, bottom line: if you’re not hiring 10 or 20 brand ambassadors per campus, you’re shooting dice with your marketing campaigns. Recruitment can be a pain in the butt, but it doesn’t have to be. Go Commando has thousands of pre-vetted student reps who have already proven themselves to be reliable and enthusiastic.
What to Do Next
- Download our old school/new school infographic that shows you how to cut your marketing time to less than two hours.
- Discover more great marketing content—subscribe to our blog.
- Start hiring student reps you can rely on! Request a demo of the Go Commando app.
Who is Campus Commandos?
Our college marketing agency functions to serve two purposes; to provide opportunity for college students, and to market products and services on behalf of brands to students on college campuses and universities across the United States. Contact us to learn more.
