publicity

[zerogabe]

Me and My alhambra high school robotics team are already started as a team this year but we are struggling with making ourselves public. We do not have enough money right now for scouters to give out items or for public presentations. Anyone have any ideas?

[Billfred]

The one question that not nearly enough teams ask with their communications: What is the objective we're trying to meet with this tactic? Set out what you need first, then figure out who needs to hear about it, then start creating your messages.

Case in point: 1618 would like to grow its student ranks in order to be able to spread our workload a little thinner across the team. We laid out some of the types of students we'd like to attract (animators, CAD, website, media, etc.), then proceeded to figure out what assets we had capable of cutting through the clutter on campus. (This automatically eliminated signs on the walls; nobody in the room could trace their membership to seeing such a sign.) Among the ideas tossed around were driving the robot around, working with student council to get a skit in the homecoming pep rally come fall, stuffing lockers with notes, and good old word of mouth. With a goal of each student bringing two or three new prospects to the next meeting in two weeks, we decided that word of mouth aimed at friends of friends with complementary interests would be the best approach. We'll see whether it works out.