Juggling Projects in Graphic Design & Social Media
My internship has had an almost carnival atmosphere at times when it comes to the projects I have undertaken. I am working with the NEIC, or Northeast Illinois Council, which is a small but busy subgrouping of the Boy Scouts of America. Very basically, I have three major projects running right now. The first is BOO Camp, a Halloween-themed fall event with costumes and outdoor activities for Cub Scouts (grade-school-aged Scouts) that doubles as a big recruitment event. The second is the Camp Ma-Ka-Ja-Wan collateral project. Camp Ma-Ka-Ja-Wan is a summer camp property owned by the council which we are trying to expand. To do this, we need new and flashy brochures and presentations to make that happen. The third thing has to do with social media management, which sort of feeds back into the other two, but includes popcorn sales, recruitment, and any outings we are doing for the kids or the community. Overall, it has been very rewarding and exciting to try new things and have the autonomy that I have had.
Boo Camp is probably my most involved project because it just keeps progressing. The event itself is on Oct. 16 and attendance is looking pretty good so far. I won’t know until the day of, though. It started out with me making some video advertisements for our social media, and these did pretty well. But the analytics said that we were not getting the kind of retention that I wanted – getting the eyes to the actual info and the call to action. So I had to shorten them up and make them punchier. So they became more like these…. And then this goofy thing when a new offer was put in for people who join the Cub Scouts in time for the event. This one I actually made from my grandparents’ house in Florida with limited internet and resources. Still, I was fairly happy with the results.
I have been pretty happy with the overall response, but I had noticed that the engagement was higher on single image posts – people just need to look at them and hit like, rather than click and watch a video – so we decided to make some posts to try and draw people in that way.
One idea I had was in the form of small comics, made with premade assets from Canva. They got some pretty good numbers and did give the info I wanted. We also had live recruitment meetings at schools, which gave me the opportunity to make some print collateral, which I then converted into a Facebook post as well. The feedback on these was so positive that it became the new logo for the event. The color scheme was eye-catching and upbeat but still spooky, and the little monsters were something fun for the kids. My manager has been pretty happy with all of this so far, along with the supervisor, the council president, and passersby at the office who have been giving great feedback and constructive criticism. All useful and fun to work with.
The Ma-Ka-Ja-Wan project has revolved around gathering data to do with the troops we are looking to pitch to, and then assembling collateral and marketing materials that we think will sell the camp to them. The biggest part of this project so far has been the map. You see, the old Ma-Ka-Ja-Map has been around since the 70s. There have been many attempts to supplant it with a new one. A topographical map was one, then a fancy minimalist looking one as well. My idea was to supplant them all with an easily edited PSD file that looked like a theme-park-style painted map.
This thing was huge and took a lot of time to draw out. The lakes, trails, and roads are all to scale and labeled.
One thing that I really think worked out well here is the engagement factor. You see, this map will be featured with marketing material, and so we put two “find it” style games in there for younger kids to play while they look at the map. The first is an easy mode where you find items in the clearing (which correlate to special events that are held by the camp like a movie night, pizza party, mountain biking, and the war canoe races, thus imparting information to them as they play). The second is a much harder “Where’s Waldo” style animal-finder game, where you find an assortment of local animals around the tree pattern (snake, beaver, fox, bear, snail, turtle, and much more). You see, I have been a scout and some of the meetings are tedious. At some point in the presentation when our presenter is discussing the ranch, or the lake, or whatever else, he will lose some kids to boredom. But it’s no phones allowed at these things…. By giving them something to do, you are keeping them engaged and having fun.
I am also making additional collateral that can be given to specific troops depending on our big selling point for them. For example: right now, there is a huge growth in all-girl troops, and our research has found that the girls in that demographic are big into horses and get really engaged when given the opportunity to go horseback riding. So when presenting to a troop like this, we want to include supplementary material that really showcases all that the horse ranch at camp has to offer. Troops who are closer to the camp up in Wisconsin, on the other hand, have access to our new day-camp operations. We want to broaden out horizons to make the camp a weekend destination and realize more profits that way. So I am making material specifically to showcase the property, the location, and stuff to do there for an off-season camper, especially the winter camping stuff, when ice fishing is a big draw.
Finally, we have the social media aspect to all of this. Social media offers us an easy way to communicate with people, but it also turns us into entertainers. We have to make content and keep eyes watching. Right now we are doing our annual popcorn sales — think like Girl Scout cookies, but instead of a world-trotting brand like thin mints we have kettle corn… it does okay. Anyways, it does help to fund local troops and packs, and the Scouts that do really well are entered into special weekly prize drawings. I have been making the posts and materials for that project. The point of these is to have a really quick turnaround and to quickly but succinctly express what the message is. I make one a week for each new sales push. The engagement is pretty good and the goals are usually pretty attainable.
These are made of simple premade assets out of Canva which I arrange together into these quick images and pair with these simple messages. It’s fun and it works pretty well.
There are a lot of other projects. I am helping out with an award banquette reel this weekend to try and get some donations and make some prominent folks in the council feel good about winning a special award, and there is still a ton more to do. I think that, if nothing else, this stuff would look great in a resume portfolio, and building one of those would be great for getting started on my career. I have had a lot of autonomy here so far and I really think that this experience is preparing me to enter the job market as a competent and collaborative marketer.
written by
DELVIN RYAN (he/him)
Delvin is a senior pursuing a B.A. in communication and media.
