AIESEC is the world's largest student organization but it is not well known among students in Lund, Sweden. The communication plan aims to raise awareness of AIESEC's existence and what it does using low-cost online and physical marketing methods. These include improving AIESEC Lund's social media presence on Facebook and Twitter, placing information in university newsletters, distributing flyers, and participating in campus events to engage with students and share information. The plan targets business, engineering, and social science students by highlighting the career and internship benefits of joining AIESEC. The goals are to recruit quality members who will actively contribute to AIESEC's activities and missions.
1. Communication Plan Fall 2010<br />AIESEC is the world´s biggest student organization, with more than 50 000 members in over 100 different countries. You would think that after these impressive facts that AIESEC would be well-known among the students in Lund and that it would have many members. It shows however that a lot of people are unaware of the existence of the organization and what it does.<br />I want to change this! I experience that there are several reasons for this. Vi have to show ourselves more in Lund in the context where Business students, Engineering students and Social Science students exist, to raise the awareness that AIESEC first and foremost does exist. But we also need to bring out what AIESEC actually does, which is something students only partly have awareness about from my personal experience. When students know that we exist and what we do, then we have to also make them realize what they, themselves want to achieve by being a member in the organization, which can sound bad, but is important though a lot of students don´t have enough time and usually prioritize whatever is more fun and will benefit them the most.<br />I am aware that we have limited resources for marketing, but I believe that there are some actions that are practically free that we can use to spread the word about AIESEC Lund. <br />Internet based marketing<br />Face book page: AIESEC Lund does exist on Facebook (FB) but only as a “person”. I think that we need to do a “site” on FB instead. It´s more appropriate for organizations like AIESEC through that you can write a presentation about what AIESEC does, make updates, point out important dates, how to get active in AIESEC. As a member you will get updates all the time just by that you have been on the site and pressed the “Like-button”.<br />Links on the University´s homepages: AIESEC is an ideally organization that is closely linked to students, on the homepages for the different departments for Business, Engineering- and Social Science students there should be updates on what AIESEC in Lund is doing and upcoming important dates.<br />Blog: A blog could channel between upcoming events and tell about AIESEC Lund´s activities. This you could do either trough blogger.com or make updates through the FB webpage which means that everybody would see this on their “News Feed”.<br />Twitter: In the same way as the FB updates or the blog can the news be spread in shorter form through Twitter. This is also a very popular tool used by a lot of companies too.<br />AIESEC Lund´s homepage: We feel that the condition of the webpage today can be improved. By making it more complete. Today it is pretty general and it could benefit from having news and upcoming meeting on there. I would also suggest that AIESEC.org, AIESEC.se and all that would be easier to handle because it is very confusing today, especially when it comes to registration of members.<br />Newsletter: Most of the Business students get their department´s newsletter through e-mail. To post upcoming, important events also for AIESEC would be good marketing though it shows that many students read this letter. Similar can be done for the Engineering Students and Social Science students too.<br />Physical marketing<br />Flyers: Spreading out flyers and conversations with people who are passing through is effective, especially when the person in say stops and talks gets the opportunity to ask questions to the AIESECer that is handing out the flyers.<br />Lecture bashes: This is a very effective way to get the message through to students and to raise our credibility for AIESEC as an organization that is connected to the students and that it is a serious organization.<br />Napkins, bikesadel covers etc: To spread the word about AIESEC in Lund there are cheap ordinary things that most students use, like napkins, paper coffee mugs, sadel covers against rain on your bike, that can be used to raise awareness.<br />Events: There are several events though different organizations and companies have stands, similar to a Business ferry. These days there will be a lot of students there asking questions and these opportunities are great to get closer to the students with our message, since we will have a dialog and answer all the question exactly that person had in mind.<br />Dinners/Parties: We would like to organize dinners/parties for the actives in AIESEC Lund. But not only them, but they could also invite friends that have shown an interest for AIESEC but didn´t really take that step into the organization. Some people need just this push to be more active and it is a good way of also doing team building.<br />Post boards: Very popular among students to look for what is up during the week. These post boards exist in all libraries, open spaces in the departments and also in Lund at least in almost every toilette.<br />PR: Since AIESEC is a very interesting organization we need to get us into the student media. Like newspapers, magazines, radio etc. We have already now been promised to get an article in a the Business departments magazine which covers 5000 Business Students and goes out to 400 companies.<br />Timeline <br />Most of the suggestions that are stated above are meant to last all year. Of course in periods like September- November and February- April, when the recruitment is crucial there will be more focus on the things.<br />But we wish to have a sustainable marketing throughout the whole year and the ideas like dinners, or events are to be held throughout the year.<br />Questions to be asked<br />The different students react differently, but in general these are the facts:<br />Business Students value the result and what this gives them on their CV.<br />Engineering students are more practical and if there is a possibility arrange for them to try something but the word internship values a lot here<br />Social Science students are interested in the society in general and also usually a bit in the world development. We need to make sure to show that AIESEC is an organization that helps and develops and here market all our development internships, and I think it´s here where most of our Summer- Abroad EP´s will be raised.<br />It´s not about quantity it´s about quality<br />It´s not about recruiting as many members as possible that later on don´t do anything except being registered on my@.net. We need to underline that to be a member you need to contribute and separate the different roles in the LC. It´s not good having somebody do little bit of everything. Everybody should now which team and their role. This will be provided from the LCP but also from every team leader.<br /> <br />