The campus recreation department at Portland State University (PSU) is working to ensure students make health and wellness a priority.
Last Wednesday, May 13th it held the fifth annual Nourish Wellness Fair. At the fair students, faculty and staff had the opportunity to receive a wide variety of services such as acupuncture, body composition testing, dental screenings, massages and various other fitness assessments.
“It is really important to us that the fair is as interactive as possible,” said Erin Bransford, the coordinator of fitness and health promotion at PSU. “We tell all the vendors that an expectation of participating is that they have some sort of interactive activity at their table. That can range from offering samples of their products to offering free services.”
Prior to the fair, the PSU recreation center launched an extensive marketing campaign in order to get the largest student turn out possible, which included the enticement of a wide variety of free goods and services. According to Bransford, one of the most effective ways to get the word out is through targeted email blasts, sent directly to those who have indicated they are interested in fitness and health promotions.
“The wellness fair is definitely a big event for us so it goes through all the channels that we have,” explained Bransford. “Targeted email blasts are huge. We also send emails out to a lot of campus Listservs. Then we created a Facebook event, we have it on our website and we have posters.”
Students were also incentivized to attend the fair for a chance to win raffle prizes. If students visited at least 10 different vendors, they were entered into a raffle to win various items donated by the vendors.
Another key marketing strategy: word of mouth. According to Bransford, since the event is in its fifth year and has been very successful in the past, students who have been in previous years keep coming back and maybe even bring friends with them.
The fair not only promotes health and wellness, it also raises students’ awareness of all the resources available to them, both on and off campus. “We did it in the spring term so that students who were graduating and would no longer have access to a lot of the PSU resources would understand that just because they are graduating doesn’t mean there aren’t other resources that can still help them prioritize wellness,” added Bransford.
