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Here's the amazing thing about marketing, you can apply so many faces to a project. This means you have to know your audience. Now, I don't know about your school. But here in Avon, talks about colleges and whatnot would put people to sleep. We talk a lot about that with parents, but when it comes to students we tend to put that on the back burner. The truth is, most incoming freshmen and sophomores aren't really that interested in that yet, and they don't really need to be.
Try this on. Consider and advertising campaign with signs that say things like "Interested in art? Want to go into graphic design? Stop by this room and this time." It's a different target audience that has a different skill set that, while not normally robotics prone, you and I both know is heavily important for a team to function properly.
Now I know you're talking about a school presentation so that may not be what you're trying to do right now, so let's focus on that. First off, who's your target audience? The entire school? Have you considered talking to the middle school? They're the best resource because they'll be coming to you guys next year. Get the seeds of robotics awesomeness planted early. As far as your actual presentation, again use some of those marketing faces. Don't talk so much about the robot, because FIRST isn't really about the robot. The robot is simply a key or a tool that grants you access to all the other amazing things such as competitions, prizes, etc. You should also think of cool ways to build up the excitement, like incentives to attend the first meeting, and so on.
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I could not agree more with this.
When running demos you are advertising your team and need to come at it from an advertising/marketing angle.
My team went through this kind of recruitment crisis in 2008 and 2009 when the team administration changed schools and for those two years we had maybe 5 or 6 students in total from schools other than the administrating school.
I would suggest approaching whoever does announcements at your school(s) and seeing if they will make an announcement about your team or if you have TV announcements make a "commercial" and see if they will show it.
My team has started recruiting from the 7 high schools in our District, as well as the Junior High schools.