Creative Ways to Publicize

Are you tired of using boring 8.5” x 11” sheets of paper in conventional ways to advertise your programs?  Get creative and think outside the box!  The following are some more unique ways to advertise and attract residents’ attention.  Many of them are gimmicks that will only work one time, but they’re still great ideas…and fun too!

As always, check with your RLC/RD to be sure that a particular method is okay in your hall.

• Hang all the flyers for one program upside down
• Cut up slips of paper and put them in mailboxes (maybe with candy attached?)
• Slide quarter-sheet ads underneath doors
• Use email (you may want to use the blind carbon copy function to protect privacy)
• Email an E-vite ….many websites offer this service for free
• Write on mirrors with dry-erase markers
• Use empty food boxes, wrappers, and plastic utensils for programs involving food (for example, tape sporks to flyers to advertise for Taco Bell)
• Use paper plates
• Bait and switch – make a nonsense flyer with one unusual phrase on it, like “Blue Pandas on Tuesday.”  When residents ask, tell them about the real program.
• Reveal bit by bit – Start with just one word on a flyer and then add a new word everyday:  Super….then add…..Bowl….then add….Party….then add date and time.
• Use newspapers and magazines to cut out words
• Use digital camera pictures
• Write on toilet paper and tape it across doorframes
• Make an edible bulletin board that has candy (in wrappers) stapled on as the border
• Use a deck of playing cards
• Laminate the flyer and hang it in the showers
• Roll up flyers with rubber bands and leave on resident “doorsteps” like a newspaper
• Have your super-residents (the ones who normally attend everything) help you make publicity
• Call residents on the phone; you’ll probably surprise them.
• Cut flyers into funky shapes -- get your trapezoid on.
• Go to the dining hall at a popular time and hand out invitations to residents
• Write personalized notes to quieter, less involved residents
• Decorate a garbage bag and hang it flat on the wall
• Write on (or staple flyers to) an old pillowcase
• Make a “clothesline” along the wall with string and use clothespins to pin up posters
• Hang flyers like mistletoe from resident doorframes
• Use popsicle sticks
• Fingerpaint a sign
• Use tiny tiny tiny font and put it in the middle of a big sheet of paper
• Write on balloons with marker/sharpie and then blow them up
• Use doorhangers on doorknobs  (an easy way to do this is to use the letter press to cut out zeros or O’s and then staple your ads to them)
• Revisit the 80s – use glitter
• Use post-it notes
• Use a cardboard box
• Record a voice invitation as a .wav file and email it to residents
• Set up a boom box in the bathroom in the morning to play music that advertises your program (i.e. Irish music for a St. Patty’s day program)
• Crumple up the flyers and then tape them to people’s doors
• Use tissue-flowers
• Fold up flyers like notes that you would’ve passed in 6th grade J  (Remember the triangle fold and the “pull-tab” fold?)
• Have a craft night where residents make signs for an upcoming program