Market to participants – a retrospect

A word I learned in my marketing course in the first semester best describes it in the best way: „marketpenetration“. Our market: students from all the universities on earth. We did not start without any strategy: texts and guidelines where composed during the next couple of days.

One form of communication are the social networks.  We use studiVZ (the biggest social network in Germany) and Facebook to spread our message of Rubicon. Some might refer this to be spaming, but unlike the daily data-garbage in our mailboxes we were confronted with consequences. After a short time we received notice that our accounts are in danger because of alleged misuse(we supposedly sent too many messages). Three of us suddenly can not send messages, too bad. We were facing the problem, that you can not contact all of your friends and spread the news in groups in a short time, although using personal messages.

The most  important channel is still acquisition via telephone. So, we dedicated ourselves to contact the best universities from around the world directly. The calls were made in English, German and even French. At first searching for the right contact at the foreign universities. When the right contact has been found, he or she receives at first a general explanation of what Rubicon is, followed by the demand: „Please forward the information about Rubicon to your students.“. Now only the most important part is still missing: sending an e-mail after the call with all the important information to be forwarded. All the time you hope you reached the right person at the foreign university and that the Rubicon message will reach all the students.

Now it’s Monday morning, the 2nd of February 2009 – the application-deadline is in a couple of hours. Now it is time to wait for a reaction. Will our work have been worth it?