BY MEGAN FIELDS ‘17
Innovation in the Nichols College marketing program has never been so progressive.
Professor Jean Beaupré’s Honors Principles of Marketing course is collaborating with footwear manufacturer Crocs—with an admirable goal of sending the famous shoes to children in Haiti.
What started as a humorous academic exercise about one student’s love for Crocs transformed into an academic project when Crocs’s corporate team responded. Professor Beaupré’s students created a video featuring student Brooke Downey, who was eager to share her love for Crocs with her marketing class. This leant to the premise of the video, with all of the students pretending to stage an intervention for her “obsession.”
After sending in the video to Crocs, the company’s corporate team responded with its own video—and an offer: Turn this little project into a full-blown program to bring Crocs to the Nichols campus while working toward a charitable cause. For every Nichols College student who posts a photo wearing Crocs and Tweeting (and posting to Instagram) the trending hashtags #crocscampuschallenge and #crocsforhaiti, Crocs will donate up to 250 pairs of Crocs to children in Haiti.
Professor Len Harmon’s Marketing Communication and Professor Megan Nocivelli’s Consumer Marketing classes are assisting in the collaboration, using social media to promote the hashtags. Students have been incentivized to use this project to increase their final exam grades, which will be measured by how many times each student and others they have influenced are Tweeting with the specific hashtags.
To help support the Crocs for Haiti initiative, students can attend events across campus sponsored by the program and use social media with the hashtags #CrocsCampusChallenge and #CrocsForHaiti. The Nichols Crocs Campus Challenge team is responsible for holding this week’s events and for the @NicholsCrocs Twitter and Instagram handles. Marketing students in the Consumer Marketing and Marketing Communication classes would also appreciate your support with the additional hashtags #mktg361 and #mktg435, respectively.
