Slammed with School Work
In the office supply racket, fall works up its own froth over BTS, Back-to-School. And with a whole spectrum of super bright supplies to sling at students’ sagging spirits (and parents’ eager optimism), Poppin was plenty busy—producing the usual seasonal collateral along with a Lookbook and a food-truck-inspired, Boston-bound pop-up shop that would work the college circuit, serving up notebooks and gel pens to supply-starved students.
The writing challenges presented were twofold:
• Since featured products targeted students Kindergarten through college, the press copy often had to engage wallet-toting co-eds and their parents—as well as the parents of teens, tweens, and kid-kids.
• There was no name, no angle, not yet even a product menu when I was asked to cook up some fliers, door tags, and such for the junket. The products weren’t free and, in ramen-terms, they’re not cheap. So serving them up out of a truck? Were I still a student, I might say: Big whoop.
To create any social media buzz, I felt the language itself had to be engaging, to be both fun to say and ripe with innuendo—totally begging for repetition. I came up with personifying the products as “Study Buddies” and playing with the innuendo of “Hooking-Up.” Making the campaign copy flirtatious and keeping it tethered to actual workplace/studying conventions, kept it true to brand: Savvy and sassy. Plus, college radio could talk about heading down to the Hook-Up Truck!
I mean, who doesn’t want to hook-up with a new study buddy that’s totally revolutionary, super bright, gets the job done, and is so hubba-hubba that you actually get a little giddy about getting to work? You can serve me a hook-up any day of the week.
Merrill Feitell 