What is Femme4?

    Femme4 was created as a student-run public relations agency. We are a small group of 5 senior women at The University of Southern Mississippi. For our Senior Capstone (the class we must pass to graduate with our degrees), we were assigned a large group project: to create and run an effective campaign. 

    Since we were the only 5 students who had the privilege of taking this class in the Fall (due to being the top 10% of our class), we were able to work hands-on with our professor to run a phenomenal campaign. 

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About the campaign:

   My teammates and I were lucky enough to receive a grant of $2,000 from  Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) for the Fall 2019 semester in order to run this campaign. We were given a topic pertaining to the First Amendment. We had to promote and educate students and faculty on the previous-ran campaign called 1 For All. 

    1 For All is owned and operated by MTSU and works to educate United States citizens on their First Amendment rights. 

    For our campaign, we split the rights amongst the 5 of us: freedom of the press, petition, assembly, speech, and religion. I researched petition for the majority of the campaign. With this information, we were able to conduct surveys and focus groups to better understand the students of USM. 

    Our biggest problem with this campaign was when we found that over half of the students at USM did not know the rights outlined in the First Amendment. Shockingly, I must add, the majority of students believed that the right to bear arms was protected in the First Amendment. 

    We knew we had to act quickly with elections on the forefront. 

    We devised a plan to get students involved in events on campus. We held 4 events:

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      1. First Amendment Wall. 

           Here, we coerced students in the Cook Library to participate in answering "What does the First Amendment mean to you?" by offering donuts as incentives. We were able to exceed our goal of 50 students reached within 1 hour! Above are some images of the event.  

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      2. First Amendment Jeopardy

 With this simple Jeopardy event, we set up a booth in USM's Thad Cochran Center where we would have access to students for hours at a time! We were able to talk to students about their involvement on campus as well as their knowledge of their rights. 

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      3. Class Cart 

           Students hate walking to class. We knew that and acting on it. We were able to talk the USM Foundation into letting us borrow their golf cart for 3 hours one Wednesday morning for this event (Ps: thank you!) 

           The rules were simple: you could get a ride to class as long as you answered questions on the 1st Amendment. However, if you got 3 answers wrong, you had to keep walking.

 

      4. Speed "dating"

           With the elections coming up (both Presidential and local), we knew that this one would be a hot topic. Just like in a "speed dating" setting, we set students up to "date" one another. Each student was assigned to an opposing view. For instance, a student who identified as "more liberal" was paired up to a student who is "more conservative." Students were given a prompted question pertaining to the 1st Amendment and given a set time to answer before moving to the next person. 

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My part in the campaign:

     As a social media analytic fanatic, I volunteered to be the designated designer for the agency. I created the graphics (most of them), the Instagram grid layout, as well as the blog. 

    When deciding on our design for the agency as well as the campaign, I focused on basic shapes and solid colors. This included triangles, half circles and squares in order to maintain a professionality to our brand. 

    I am honored to have been the graphic designer to the campaign and the agency. It allowed me to work on my Photoshop skills as well as inspire me to reach out of my comfort zone. Since I am looking for a career in creative design, I knew that this would be a great way for me to showcase my talents. 

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What I learned:

     As I've mentioned in my bio, I am a public relations major by accident. (I actually thought I was going into human resources and somehow didn't know the two were not the same thing). However, I have found that I have a passion for this kind of work. 

     After running this campaign, I have realized that I truly love social media marketing and branding. I also love reaching out to the public in order to express my ideas (or someone else's). 

       This campaign truly helped me become more comfortable with my major and my way of expressing myself.