Giddy Up Pay Up: A Public Relations Campaign

The Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) annually hosts a national campaign case study competition for public relations students known as the Bateman Competition. More than 120 universities compete with teams of four to five students. Central’s 2014 Bateman team had five team members and two alternates. The competition requires students to research, plan, implement, and evaluate a strategic public relations campaign in their community based on a topic given by National PRSSA. This year, Fiserv Inc., a leading provider of financial services and technology solutions, was the corporate sponsor and challenged each team to increase awareness and usage of Fiserv’s person-to-person digital payment service, Popmoney. CWU students applied in May 2013 to participate in the competition and in August 2013 conducted primary research regarding previous campaigns last summer. PRSSA National announced the campaign topic in August 2013. From September through December, the team worked cohesively on further research, planning and the campaign development, which could not be executed until February 1, 2014. The CWU campaign, GiddyUpPayUp, peaked with a 5K run, with proceeds donated to the CWU Foundation for a PR scholarship. All of the events for the campaign were powered by Popmoney, including registration for the 5k event. In addition to the Pop of Orange 5K, the team held a PopPong night in the SURC to bring awareness to Popmoney. Furthermore, the CWU Bateman team was also able to host a series of financial awareness nights in the residence halls to talk to on-campus residents about Popmoney