Students launch marketing initiative on behalf of Bethel Park Recreation
You’ve heard of the generation gap. Apparently, it’s come to social media.
“We’ve all used Instagram and Snapchat recreationally,” Bethel Park High School student Makayla Yee said about two of the more popular platforms among her classmates. “But Facebook was new for us, because it’s something that our parents use. None of us had it, so we had to download the app.”
That’s right. As far as many youngsters are concerned, the brand that revolutionized how we communicate has reached dinosaur status.
But Makayla and fellow sophomores Amber Simeone and Julia Casaldi were determined to reach a more, uh, mature audience with their marketing project: to work on improving the Bethel Park Recreation and Leisure Services Department’s spreading the word about its programs.
Since the summer, the students have been collaborating with the department on initiatives that include, yes, posting frequently on the Bethel Park Recreation Facebook page, plus coming up with a means to obtain feedback from members of the community.
“We thought that it was really important to design a survey so that we got direct feedback of what the community wants to see from the rec department, or how well they think they’re already doing at promoting themselves,” Makayla explained.
While the students’ efforts appear to be succeeding on behalf of the recreation department – a recent Chicken University program about raising the egg-producing fowl, for example, drew nearly a capacity crowd – they also have earned Amber, Julia and Makayla a statewide honor.
Their project, “Catch Up With Your Community,” took second place in the Public Relations Plan competition during Pennsylvania DECA’s annual State Career Development Conference. The group, affiliated with a national organization formerly called Distributive Education Clubs of America, helps prepare students in marketing, finance, hospitality and management.
Bethel Park marketing teacher Emily Smoller provided a list of ideas for projects.
“This one seemed really interesting to us, with social media and being able to create different posts,” Amber said.
Despite their unfamiliarity with it, Facebook seemed like a good place to start.
“Right now, we’re mostly trying to get the parents, because they’re the ones who sign their kids up,” Julia explained. “In the future, we would hope to target our age.”
As such, they plan to launch presences on the aforementioned Instagram – kind of a more mobile device-friendly version of Facebook, which owns the rights to it – and Snapchat, which has the distinctive feature of content being available only for a short time before it becomes inaccessible to recipients.
The students also are getting the word out at the high school through Blackhawk TV and the Hawk Eye online publication, and to Bethel Park at large with the public access BPTV.
As for the future, they are striving for efficiencies on behalf of the recreation department.
“We hope to become the sole editors of the Facebook pages,” Julia said, “so that we can get things updated faster and get more posts out to the citizens of Bethel Park.”