Flat Campaign Gives Students Deep Experience

Published: January 26, 2015 | Author: Tommy Guigino | Read Time: 2 minutes

Southern Utah University welcomed their newest master’s of professional communication (MAPC) professor, but he isn’t lecturing classes or handing out tests. No, he is traveling through the mail and hashtags to prove to prospective students of the greatness of this graduate communication program.

Flat Matt, as the professor is so fondly named, is a part of the MAPC’s latest marketing campaign and is wholly created by students within the program.   

Shawn Domgaard and Emily Olsen, SUU graduate students in the professional communication program, were in a graduate level integrated marketing communication class last spring when they had an assignment to create a marketing campaign to promote the master’s program and there they created the idea of Flat Matt. But now their class assignment has taken life and is being initiated by the program with a purpose to recruit and enroll students.

With inspiration coming from a children’s character, Flat Matt was named after the program director Matt Barton, and is already taking many flattened adventures through the mail, spotted at such places as the beach and national parks.

Domgaard, who received his bachelor’s degree in communication from SUU, said of the Flatt Matt project, “Most of the time strategies might focus on just Twitter or just Instagram, but this has all of the social media platforms. ...It incorporated traveling, education and having fun like you did when you were a kid.” 

Domgaard went on to say, “Projects like Flat Matt have been part of an overall feeling that I get from the this master’s program, which is that academia and practical learning can coexist. I have learned a lot of theories, but things like Flat Matt help me see what works in the real world.”

This campaign is now moving off the whiteboard to social media walls where all can participate in the Flat Matt campaign to win prizes, with the grand prize being a $1,000 scholarship. 

Barton said he hopes students will send back their adventures with Flat Matt and the campaign will help people to find out more about the program.

“Sometimes as academics we can take ourselves too seriously,” he said. “This is to let people know that [the masters program] is here and we have personalities and we like to have fun.”

For contest rules and instructions go to the MAPC blog.  

---

Contact Information:

435-586-5400
Contact the Office of Marketing Communication