A few weeks ago, Her Campus UGA hosted the Her Campus Tour, a national tour that comes to select college campuses every year with fun activities and awesome partnerships with different brands. It’s a great opportunity for chapters to get marketing and event experience, and we were so lucky to be chosen this year! Hosting the Her Campus Tour is an adventure our chapter will never forget. Keep reading to find out what we learned!
1. Promoting a big event is hard work.
Trying to convince 500+ busy students to attend an event is no small feat. We spent weeks posting on our social media channels and promoting the event through Instagram giveaways, but of course that only reached people who were already following us! To try to catch the eyes of the rest of UGA’s female population, we had to put up 100 posters all over campus and stand in Tate Plaza for a day passing out even more flyers. If you were in a building in the middle of campus that first week of April, you definitely passed at least one of our posters. But of course, getting people to come to the event was only part of the battle.
2. Teamwork makes the dream work!
We also had to help set up for the event and staff it all day, and it definitely takes a village to raise a HC tour! From blowing up the cute inflatables to stuffing what seemed like an endless amount of goodie bags, it was an all hands on deck kind of day. But thanks to the amount of meticulous planning that went into the event, right down to which perfume bottles and sunglasses went on which shelf in a brand area, everything went smoothly!
3. Putting faces to names we see so often from Her Campus nationals is a surreal experience.
A small picture in an email signature only gets you so far, so it was incredible to meet some of the amazing women from nationals. Our Campus Correspondents had been corresponding with a national leader for months, and it was great finally seeing her in person. Our team was also thrilled to meet Windsor Western, a co-founder and current president of Her Campus. Many of us were a little bit starstruck, but she was so nice and friendly! One of our CCs was even able to be in a Facebook Live with Windsor on the national Her Campus page. Not quite fifteen minutes of fame, but close enough.
4. The people at Her Campus really know what makes a quality Instagram post.
Every part of the tour was so adorable and photo-worthy. We loved posing with the inflatables in front of the tour logo while wearing our neon Her Campus shirts! Another prime photo opportunity was posing with all of the cute denim jackets.
And of course, how could we forget about the awesome swings in front of the foliage wall, with a neon sign? Can you say boomerang material?
5. Standing on your feet all day makes you feel like you’ve been hit by a truck.
Many of us were at the tour the entire time, from 8am to almost 5pm. Spending that long standing at the designated booths, packing goodie bags, talking with students and the overall walking around really takes a toll on your body! We reached the end of the day and realized that many of us had been so busy we forgot to drink any water. When we got home, we were all happy to collapse into bed, get hydrated and commiserate about our aching feet in our group message.
6. Our team is capable of incredible things.
But no matter how tired we were, it was worth it. We were so proud of our team’s dedication to the tour both before and during the event. We were really nervous that something would go wrong or only a few students would show up, but our fears were unfounded. The UGA stop of the HC tour had a total of 708 attendees, which went way over our goal and ended up being the best-attended stop from any college on the tour this year.
Thanks, UGA, for coming out to support us!
All images courtesy of Her Campus UGA team members.