Great Social Media Idea: Hand-Delivered Acceptance Letters

I've probably written about Marquette University more than any other college, and with good reason. They absolutely kill it with social media. (Check out this Q&A with the brilliant Tim Cigelske for a peak behind the curain of how and why Marquette does what they do.)

So of course, Marquette knocked it out of the park with this super fun, touching, and great video in which they got the Marquette Golden Eagle mascot to hand-deliver some acceptance letters to unsuspecting students.

It. Is. Awesome.

This is one of those things that doesn't need a whole lot of blathering (blatherskite!) from me. It just stands by itself as a wonderful little slice of social media brilliance. This video will make a lot of people smile, which - in my book - is a sign of supreme social success. (Sibilant alliteration ahoy!)

But I will say this on a more general level - if you read articles or go to events about social media, you probably hear over and over about the importance of content marketing. The drumbeat about content marketing has been going strong for a while now, and while I definitely count myself among the adherents of the notion that you need to give people things they actually want to watch and engage with, I feel like a lot of brands miss the mark and end up making things about themselves rather than things that have value to an audience. People are smart enough to immediately recognize a lamely branded and obvious sales pitch under the guise of "content." 

It's videos like this - that provide real value to the person watching at home - that resonate as content marketing. Is Marquette heavily featured in there? Absolutely. But at no point does it delve into all the great things about the school or why it's a good investment or any of that. It understands that the pay-off here is seeing students and families get excited and feel proud about being accepted into college. People will figure out on their own that Marquette is a great school that's not easy to get into.

Congrats to everyone at Marquette who worked on this - truly a great project! True story - I was about to send an email to my coworkers to share this with them, and lo and behold there was already an email in my inbox with this very video. I'd say when multiple people from a college halfway across the country are seeing the same thing and thinking it's so awesome they want to share it with colleagues, you know you're doing something right.