Friday schedules at CWRU incorporate community hour, an hour and a half during which no student has class. When April 1st fell on a Friday this year, I knew UPB should capitalize on the opportunity.

Originally, I planned a pop-up event in front of the library, but the location was booked. While it was well-received as a proposal, we wouldn’t able to execute it as well as possible, so I starting thinking of other ideas. At the same time, I had been watching some zombie grime art tutorials. Why not make something gooey, like pizza?

And so the idea of the University Pizza Board was born. For April Fool’s Day, the promotions committee would host its first ever promo-only committee. That meant no co-sponsoring with other committees such as traditions. This event would be solely to promote our Facebook page (I steadfastly - but politely - redirected attempted attempts to incorporate surveys about other events or other promotions). During that community hour, UPB members would hand out sticker and pizza slices in exchange for Facebook likes.

By doing so, I hoped to increase the amount of likes, as well as rewarding current followers of the page. The event was purposefully simple so people didn’t feel like they had to exert much effort to connect with UPB, both with the page online and with the members at the event.

Posts hinting at the event began appearing on the page about a week before. We had to keep the hype rolling, or people would forget. The morning of, I revealed the surprise.

The graphics and tone reflected a chill, slimer 90s vibe. We were pretty silly and I wanted this event to stand out. It was an amazing offer: a hot slice of pizza from a reputable off-campus pizzeria in Little Italy and a custom sticker sheet. I knocked out the doodles while feeling particularly inspired and it was really fun to draw in all the drips. The Facebook posts outlined the situation of 1 like = 1 pizza slice.

A mockup of the sticker sheet (for better alignment, the final product involved some rotation).

Not everything went perfectly. We missed the largest rush of people leaving their classes from the quad, leaving members to stand in the cold handing out slices to stragglers. The sticker vendor completely missed the agreed-upon delivery date, leading to a very frantic, last-minute trip to Medina (an hour drive) to collect 450 cheesy stickers. In addition, there were a lot of high school tour groups that day. Maybe we just roped in some people very early, though.

The chilly day meant few people were on the binary, but it didn't slow us down.

More UPB members than I expected showed up to hand out pizza! Our new board member windbreakers have our UPB logo, which was perfectly the size of the modified slimy logo.

The official University Pizza Board jacket, with Erin displaying the matte sticker sheet.

We handed out pizza on napkins instead of plates to reduce the waste produced. We only ordered one type of pizza to reduce the amount of decision-making people had to make and simplify the interaction between UPB members and other students. Our event was centered on pizza and Facebook. By doing so, we did exclude people without smartphones and Facebook profiles, as well as those who could not consume the cheese pizza. We did, however, hand out the sticker sheets to everyone we saw (and maybe a few squirrels).

I posted a photo during the event to bump the event in people's newsfeeds.

The event was well-received and many people were pleased surprised by the new rebrand.

One participant (not pictured), claimed that he was in a hurry but took the time to set down his belongings after our claims of “there’s always time for pizza.”

At the end of community hour, it was time to set things straight.

I hope to plan more promotions-only events in the future to launch new social media channels or boost certain pages. It’s also a great way for people to get to know the people who make up UPB!