Sparks Magazine Release Party
Sparks Magazine is an Asian American student-run magazine that is dedicated to discussing and appreciating the APIDA experience. Its original chapter started at UF, but there are other chapters of it at UCF and USF. I have been a part of Sparks Magazine’s Publicity department since my freshman year, and I’m proud to be their Publicity director for the last two years. As the director, I was committed to growing Sparks Magazine’s presence in the Asian American Student Union community on campus.
The Chaotic Beginning
The Publicity team is in charge of planning the logistics of the Release Party. Ever since the pandemic, Sparks Magazine did not have in-person release parties until a year ago. This meant that there were no protocols or guidelines, and it was essentially up to my team and me to figure out how we can make the Release Party exciting and make people on campus not only aware of Sparks Magazine’s Release Party but to RSVP as well. And, boy, was that exciting.
“Our Legacy”
For the Fall '22 Release Party, my team and I decided to create a specific color theme for the Instagram feed to distinguish promotional material from the standard Sparks in-feed material. This semester's issue focused on the theme of "legacy," so we chose green because of the symbolism that surrounds the emerald green color in East Asian history and legends. Plus, this would match the magazine cover’s colors as well.
After several— and I mean several, brainstorming sessions, my team and I gathered a couple of insights after looking through what worked previously on our in-feed and what did not. We found that our followers were most interested in content that either revolved around the development of the magazine or posts featuring our staffers. So, we planned early on to incorporate all of their favorite content for our Release Party promotion campaign.
Everything in the promotions would lead up to the final, most anticipated, reveal of the newest magazine issue's cover. In order to provide these "sneak peeks" throughout the month leading up to the Release Party, the Publicity team and I coordinated with the photographers to get behind-the-scenes footage during the beginning stages of the magazine story development. People loved being able to see their friends in the videos and wanted to further support them, which we saw was a major driving force in the increasing RSVPs for the Release Party.
We also reached out to local businesses who were willing to support our cause and be a sponsor for the Release Party, which allowed us to incorporate a big giveaway and prizes for the party that about 30% of our RSVPs said they were excited about. Our giveaway post alone got over 500 comments.
After running a cohesive in-feed schedule, I'm proud to say that we reached more than 6k accounts, had a +47.1% engagement rate, and increased our following by 5.6%! In the end, we went from having a typical 30-person turnout to a 100+ person turnout at this Fall ‘22 Release Party! This was our most successful Release Party to date, and I’m glad that my team and I were able to set the bar high and strong for future parties.