BYU’s new Y Digital social media lab is hosting a city-wide Snapchat scavenger hunt Friday, September 8. The scavenger hunt began at 9 a.m. and will run until 11 p.m.
Students are invited to visit 20 different businesses in the Provo/Orem area, take a selfie on Snapchat with a customized geofilter, and submit to Y digital to be entered to win prizes. Y Digital is offering more than $500 worth of prizes, including event tickets, backpacks, gift cards and more.
Y Digital Director Adam Durfee said the best way to learn social media is to actually do it for real people, real clients, and run real campaigns.
“I challenged my students this summer to come up with a great social media idea — a campaign that we could run to teach them all aspects of how to do social media for the real world,” he said.
Durfee’s students came up with the idea for a Snapchat scavenger hunt and decided to run it. Students learned a number of skills including how to influence marketing, digital analytics, and website development during this process, according to Durfee.
“Our goal with this project is to teach students how to run a social media marketing campaign,” Durfee said. “We’re hoping to let the campus and community know who we are in the process.”
Public relations senior Claire Sonksen said the scavenger hunt is a great way to raise awareness about the new Y Digital Strategy Lab. There are numerous locations where students can get free stuff just for showing up.
“You can go to The Chocolate and if you take a Snapchat with a geofilter — there’s one custom made at The Chocolate — put your name on it and send it to us, you’re getting an entry into a drawing to win BYU swag and you’re also getting free cookies at The Chocolate,” Sonksen said.
Public relations junior Nick Glover said the lab is run exactly like a business. Students in the lab work with paying clients. Students have worked with Major League Baseball teams, Pepsi and Marriott. Working on this campaign exposed students to how to kick-off a campaign, according to Glover.
“We had to go around Provo and Orem and pitch all the clients and businesses,” Glover said. “We contacted a bunch of places here on campus for advertising, so it just sort of got us exposed to all of the work that goes into putting a campaign together.”
Some 300 students pre-registered for the scavenger hunt and the agency website has received over 1200 views. For more information about the scavenger hunt students can visit the Y Digital website.
