Facing challenges of campus fliering
Third-year American literature student Travis Barnes (left) and third-year ethnomusicology student Zach Meyerowitz flier for Bruin Woods outside of Kerckhoff Hall. Those who stand on Bruin Walk have come up with a variety of ways to attract passersby.
By Sonali Kohli
Feb. 7, 2010 10:36 p.m.
“Help children!”
“Best summer of your life!”
“You need this.”
Every UCLA student who walks through Bruin Walk to get to class hears these phrases daily as they are accosted by fliers that will supposedly change their lives.
As a freshman in 2005, Dylan Matteson was one of the students who used any method possible to avoid taking the fliers. He replied to the people offering them with “No, thanks,” or a question to test their knowledge of what they were giving out.
A year later, Matteson was part of an on-campus organization that gives out fliers on Bruin Walk, becoming one of the people he had previously tried to outwit.
Instead of giving out half-page fliers in the midst of the Bruin Walk commotion, though, Matteson and his peers gave out brochures at the end of Bruin Walk.
And instead of monotonously extending the brochures to random passersby, they wore Bruin Woods T-shirts and approached people individually, with an enthusiastic demeanor and the aid of a large informational posterboard and music to entice students to apply for a summer position at the Lake Arrowhead retreat for UCLA alumni and their families, he said.
“It was obvious when no one took anyone else’s fliers and then they took ours that our method was superior,” he said.
Matteson graduated in 2009, and as the new manager of Bruin Woods, one of his responsibilities is to make people aware of Bruin Woods via fliers on Bruin Walk.
This year, the personal approach to getting people’s attention is the same, but instead of brochures, Matteson’s team hands out full-page fliers with information and pictures on the front and a Sudoku on the back to convince students to keep the fliers for longer than they normally would, Matteson said.
“We are in any way, shape or form trying to set ourselves apart from other people,” he said.
When competing for attention on a busy venue such as Bruin Walk, people use either a physiological or social shock to set themselves apart, said Dee Bridgewater, a communication studies lecturer.
Matteson said his approach has worked so far, since Bruin Woods has thus far received about 200 applicants, similar to last year’s numbers, but he will not know the complete effect until today when the applications are due.
Students handing out fliers may shock people with a startling visual image or a sharp auditory phrase, Bridgewater said, or they break social barriers by approaching strangers as if they are acquaintances, then give the flier once they have the person’s attention.
On Bruin Walk, for example, this happens often when a person with a flier drops it on the ground as someone walks by, then says, “Excuse me, you dropped this,” giving out the flier before the person receiving it realizes what it is.
Although this method is effective in putting the flier in someone’s hand, it is harmful in the long run because of the backlash effect that occurs, Bridgewater said.
“When people realize they’ve been tricked or hoodwinked, then (they) react to a person or flier more negatively,” Bridgewater said. “It’s been shown that willing consent brings about a more deep and long-lasting change in people.”
The best way to get people interested in what someone is offering is to be direct and to let the club or activity speak for itself, Bridgewater added.
“If you don’t say what you’re actually fliering about, people might take (the flier), but then you’re a liar and they don’t care (what you gave),” said Dane Nightingale, a fourth-year Spanish student who fliers for Bruin Woods.
Because there are so many groups using Bruin Walk to distribute fliers, however, many students walk through and avoid fliers altogether, whether or not they may be interested.
“With so many people fliering, they just feel bombarded,” said third-year political science student Isabel Guerrero, who has both given and received fliers. “When you give out fliers, you get used to rejection.”
Nightingale said when he fliers, he and his colleagues compete by choosing a random person as they walk up Bruin Walk, then trying to make that person stop and take a flier, or engage them in conversation.
“There’s such a jostling for attention, each person has to be more obnoxious than the next,” Bridgewater said.
