Friday, September 04, 2009

Exhibitionist

Got to see what life was like on the other side of the exhibition counter. I'm not usually the go-to guy for this sort of thing, but times being what they are...

Anyway, iLine needed a partner with wheels and a little muscle for the heavy lifting, and since Amy wasn't available, nor X, Y or Z, I was the next logical choice. So both iLine and I set up our booth at Cedar's career festival thingy to publicize our college as an option for the girls' next port-of-call on their way up the Education pyramid.

Our collaterals were the three standees we used as the backdrop, and our giveaways: our standard flyers, our custom bottles of distilled water, and our little bags of AAA-grade rice. It was the rice that was unusual enough to be the first item to disappear from our display. They made great conversation pieces 'cos the girls wanted to know wassup with the rice?

Truth be told, I'm not actually part of the crew that gets sent to these events, so I don't actually know the standard pitch that go with these materials. However, this was an opportunity to invent wild associations about how rice is a staple, it's nutritious, it's down-to-earth, and its triple-A grade is meant to symbolize the triple-A experience they will receive in our care, should they become our students next year. Oh, and it also reminds us of home and family, which as a college, is one of our more identifying and endearing features... if you like that kind of thing.

There were other more mundane questions as well, practical things like our cut-off, curricula and co-curricula programmes, success rates. The usual.

Not sure we made that great an impact in the end. We were only one out of many competing exhibitors, after all. I guess I'll only know when I see some familiar faces in my tutorials next year.

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