We get it—feed them, and they will come. It’s a universally acknowledged truth for college students and well, everyone else too. But that doesn’t mean you need to put the word “food” on your flyers to draw in the crowds, even if it’s free. If “free pizza” is your main attraction or the only thing that seems to interest your audience, we need to rethink what you’re. It’s acceptable to advertise food when it’s something special, say a popular restaurant is donating crab cakes or maybe you have a smoothie bar. But by slapping on that word “food,” it automatically demotes what you’re giving.
Similarly, the word “fun” shouldn’t be anywhere on your marketing, even with an exclamation point. Even if it really will be sofun. That fun should be conveyed in the image you select or in the tagline or the title of the event.
Lastly, though the word “fellowship” sounds like a cool tool we stole from our Protestant brothers and sisters, the last thing it does is evoke excitement.
Compare this to the Apple tagline: think different. Kind of compelling or intriguing right? It perks your interest. They don't say flat out what to expect. They don't say: cool technology, interactive watches, and more!
When you string these words together “Food, fellowship, fun!” it sounds like a cop out for actually sharing what the event is about, and if we can’t take the time or can’t figure out how to say why your audience should come to this event, it’s probably not worth their time.
An imperfect example:
Ok, so it actually doesn't say any of those words on here, but let's just say "friends" said "fellowship," which is pretty much the same thing. The thing we're zeroing in here is that tagline. Here's what I would have done: 1) Added the logo or some kind of branding 2) eliminated "starting at" words...less is always more, but most importantly, 3) switched out the tag line with something more catchy.
As a quick change, this is what I came up with:
I'm not the biggest fan of the image (but I selected it in like 3 seconds for the sake of this post), and we haven't locked in a time yet, this was more of just a 'save the date' image. But notice how we added the logo and switched out the previous tag line with something that conveys those words without blatantly stating them.
Let's get interesting, people!