School Of Pharmacy Centennial Celebration

CHALLENGE

With a new Marketing Manager hired six months ahead of the 100^th Anniversary of the Duquesne University School of Pharmacy Celebration–expected to be one of the biggest events in the history of the School–set for late April 2025, the senior leadership team reached out to me to advise the new hire and assist the with development and execution of marketing and communications strategy to drive registrations for the special event. I practiced collaboration, delegation, and working with direct reports.

STRATEGY

I collaborated with marketing and communications staff at the university level to develop consistent branding for the Centennial Celebration, including creating a logo, various forms of content and templates for print and digital marketing campaigns. I developed a marketing calendar and communications timeline and trained the new hire on important platforms and tools, including Adobe Creative Suite, marketing automation tools, email marketing platforms, and more.

LOGO

The marketing and communications team created a standalone logo for the Centennial Celebration.

SAVE THE DATE

Using branding established by the marketing and communications team at the university level, I created a save the date.

PHOTOSHOOT

I coordinated with a professional photographer to conduct a photoshoot during a professional development event for the Class of 2025.

VIDEO

At the same event, a videographer interviewed members of the Class of 2025.

GUEST SPEAKERS

The School of Pharmacy wanted a special guest speaker for the event and contracted Rocky Bleier, a four-time Super Bowl champion with the Pittsburgh Steelers and Vietnam War veteran on Friday, and John Grabenstein, a very successful School of Pharmacy alumnus well-known in the School of Pharmacy circle.

EMAIL & REGISTRATION FORM

Using alumni email lists as the event approached, several emails went out to all alumni keeping branding consistent. Here, I started to lean on the new hire to manage communications and start to create content.

RED RING AWARD WINNERS

The new hire gathered information from the winners of the Red Ring Award, including proper name spelling, credentials, quotes and more.

RESULTS

Ultimately, 320 people registered for the Centennial Celebration, a 28% over the attendance goal, enough to necessitate a change to a bigger room, and a 113% increase in attendance from the Alumni Celebration in 2023.