Publicity Guidelines

1. A personal invitation is always the most effective form of publicity. All other forms simply supplement word of mouth publicity.

2. As you plan your publicity, answer these questions about your publicity needs:

a. How often?
b. Where?
c. What forms?
d. What target audience?
e. What content?
f. What are the deadlines?

Remember to work with the administrative guidelines on your campus. Also, if your college has a campus minister/ministry department, consult with them about publicity options.

3. Give attention to the quality of publicity, especially printing, artwork, and layout. Use your artistically gifted people on this.

4. Three governing words for publicity are: brevity, clarity, simplicity.

5. Always identify the sponsoring organization.

6. Consider personal invitations to special interest groups (such as the ecology club, hunger awareness committtee, black student union), especially if your meeting topic would be of interest to them.

7. Think of a catchy title for the meeting. For ideas look at book titles, magazine articles, song titles, popular sayings.

8. All publicity packages (except for teasers) should include the information:

a. Who is sponsoring the event?
b. Who are the key people (building, room, perhaps involved (speakers, etc.), a map)?
c. What is the program about?
d. When will it happen: date, should they come? time?
e. Where will it take place?
f. Why? What is the purpose (title, content)? of this program? Why?
g. Who is the audience? Who is invited?

9. Consider making use of both “teaser” publicity and “saturation advertising.” For example, some banners may just say “What is your reason to live?” Later advertising will seek to inform the whole campus of the needed information to attend an evangelistic meeting with that title.

10. Test your publicity effectivenes by random surveys asking people if they have heard of the event, how they heard of it, and what their impression was of the publicity.

11. Ask campus newspaper and radio station for their needs when submitting a piece for advertising.