ORU Students Use Guerilla Marketing To Raise Awareness For Good Cause

At Oral Roberts University, buses take college students to area schools once a week, where they volunteer with the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. Now, students are testing a guerilla marketing campaign to boost awareness.

For the next 48 hours, students in Chris Putman's Branding and Promotions class will try to spark a buzz around campus.

"We're going to be starting a campaign called Go Big for a Little."

They'll be wearing small badges that pack a huge meaning.

ORU Senior, Samuel Willis said, "We'll see if students start asking questions and then we can answer those questions."

The goal is to bring awareness about the need for Big Brothers Big Sisters, and get fellow students to volunteer.

"I think it's a great opportunity for the students here at ORU to get involved and give those kids some type of stability that they've never had before," Willis said.

The class functions as an ad agency with students test driving different marketing techniques, like creating and sharing a YouTube video.

Ultimately, they will present their final promotional recommendation to Big Brothers Big Sisters.

"We're perceiving that we are making a difference, and of course that's what the ORU student is all about. They just want to plug in some place where they can make a difference," Putman said.

Mingling with students and talking with strangers, the class said this is way better than your traditional lesson plan.

"We're actually applying the terms that we have learned in different ways, a real life scenario with a real client, and we have to do a real pitch," said ORU Sophomore Madeline Osiwala. "It's like real world. It's not like you're just sitting in a classroom learning."

"You can test them over guerrilla marketing and they can regurgitate the definition, but if they've lived it and done it, they can tell you 20 years from now," Putman said.

This is the second year Putman's class has picked Big Brothers Big Sisters as its client. She said after last year's project, the number of campus volunteers jumped by 200 percent.