You may have seen brand ambassadors across your social media pages working to promote different products.
[Natural sound: people talking and walking at school]
However, there’s a select group of Northwestern students who are bringing that directly to the community.
Medill senior Nadia Bidarian is one of the three Event Specialists for DoorDash’s
Campus Launcher program since winter quarter of last year. The program is hosted
across different universities as part of Door Dash’s efforts to reach younger audiences.
NADIA BIDARIAN: You can trust that their strategy is pretty aligned with the way
college students really think and act, because they have, you know, hundreds of them who are active in the Slack and giving feedback every day.
While most students have to apply for such part time positions, Bidarian explains that this is not always the case.
BIDARIAN: How all of us got recruited was that someone reached out to us on LinkedIn
[Linkedin notification sound]
BIDARIAN:as part of DoorDash.
Another Northwestern Campus Launcher, Communications senior Juliana Huang accepted her role due to its alignment with her career goals.
JULIANA HUANG: Marketing is a very broad topic. There’s social media. There’s digital analytics, but I’ve never seen what events really looks like.
Huang explained that she and the other Campus Launchers coordinate two tabling
events each week throughout the quarter to promote DashPass, one of DoorDash’s
monthly subscriptions.
[DoorDash notification sound]
Through DoorDash, the team also tries stepping into the shoes of their student
consumers
HUANG: We’ll think of what item would really incentivize students to sign up. If we can get like 100 bobas, ideally we would get 100 sign ups in return.
But Bidarian and Huang are also looking for more direct ways to support the community.
[Natural sound: Nadia talking to people at Frío Gelato tabling event]
On Friday, October 24th, the team partnered with local Chicagoland business Frío Gelato for one of their tabling events.
BIDARIAN: When we’re placing such large orders, it can be like $1,000 to one store, we want to support a local business where we can.
Looking to the future, Huang is hoping to collaborate with different campus organizations through their promotions.
HUANG: What I’ve been trying to do is think of, okay, I’m a student athlete on the fencing team; how can I take advantage of athletics? I’ve reached out to people in SpAC. I’ve reached out to people that help with the football games, the basketball games.
For Bidarian the job is more than just building organization skills or marketing tactics. It’s being a meaningful presence on the campus
BIDARIAN: It’s really nice to see people’s reactions when they realize they’re getting a free item. Sometimes it’s the exact, like pick me up you need if you’e studying for an exam or on your way to the library or to a class that you’e dreading a little bit. So that’s always very gratifying.
For WNUR, this is Chris Kim.
