HvZ Award Submission

8/12/2019 HvZ Award Submission

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The event that wont die | Submitted by the UOW Rotaract Club

HUMANS VS. ZOMBIES


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Contents

Overview: ................................................................................................................................... 2

Aims and Objectives .................................................................................................................. 3

Effect on Community Perceptions of Rotaract: ......................................................................... 3

Distinctiveness of the task or project: ........................................................................................ 4

Modes of raising awareness and recognition received .............................................................. 9

Effort of the Club in Raising Awareness of Rotaract .............................................................. 12

Results Achieved ..................................................................................................................... 12


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Humans vs. Zombies is the biggest event I have ever seen the UOW Rotaract Club attempt. It was an event geared at promotion and publicity, itwas always going to offer quirky, striking visual images, but the reach that itshad has been mind-blowing Aidan Simmons, event organiser.

Overview:Lets start with the rules. At its core Humans vs. Zombies is essentially a giant game

of tag with Nerf guns. All players begin the game as Humans who are attempting to survivethe Zombie apocalypse. Humans are being hunted by the original Zombie/s in our gamethese were members of the UOW Rotaract club and one keen competitor. Humans areconverted into Zombies via being tagged by a Zombie, Humans can stun Zombies with adirect hit from a foam dart fired from a Nerf gun or by throwing a rolled up ball of socks,Zombies are to stay put for 30 seconds after being stunned. Friend and foe are distinguished

by the position of a bright orange bandanna, Humans wear this band on their arm andZombies wrap it around their heads.

The game of Humans vs. Zombies is not our idea; originally it began in 2005 atGroucher College, America, the game has since spread virally around the world. The UOWRotaract club thanks Joe Sklover of Gnarwal Studios (who administer the game at anInternational Level) Humans vs. Zombies is usually free to play and we were grateful to begiven permission to fundraise.

Humans vs Zombies was originally designed to be played out over the course of aweek and thus was tailored to American style colleges where the bulk of students live oncampus. This style of play wasnt ideal for those looking to compete at the University ofWollongong, therefore, our game was amended to be played over the course of a single day.

With this in mind we attempted to set about finding a means of keeping competitorsengaged and moving around the campus to minimize camping (that is staying put in onelocation). To achieve this aim we devised player classes . At the beginning of the gamecompetitors were assigned with information kit which contained the rules, a map and theirobjectives card with their player class. Each class had to reach certain checkpoints around theUniversity, we set up 20 of these in total.

Beyond promotion, the event involved considerable planning and logistical work, forour first attempt at the event it was fabulous that so many competitors spoke glowingly of theevent afterwards.


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Aims and Objectives Raise the profile of UOW Rotaract within the University and the broader

community Create a vibrant, visually entertaining and engaging event that draws media

attention Forge closer ties with University staff, particularly the Centre for Student

Engagement who administer clubs on Campus Raise $1000 dollars for Rotarys End Polio Now campaign Have up to 150 players take part

Effect on Community Perceptions of Rotaract:In marketing Brand/Name recall is thought to be one of the hardest tasks for a

campaign to achieve, it is pleasing that on our survey (which had no mention of our name)some respondents mentioned UOW Rotaract specifically.

Post event we put out a feedback survey via SurveyMonkey, some of the responsesfrom the general feedback box were the following:

This game was perhaps the most fun I've had in months, I will never cease tosing praise of the Rotaract Club had a stroke of genius when they came to thisidea, and the fact that my money went to supporting End Polio Now Campaigngave me a warm and fuzzy feeling for each zombie scum I sent back to hell.7/9/2013 7:05 PM

Great idea and execution. I cant wait until the next one! 7/9/2013 1:44 PM

It was AWESOME. Thanks so much for hosting it! 7/5/2013 3:52 PM

You folk did a great job, and I am extremely impressed by your organisationof the event, as a first time effort :-) 7/5/2013 1:02 PM

Do it again! please! 7/10/2013 12:29 PM

It was amazing and should be done again if at all possible!!!!! 7/9/2013 5:30 PM

On the event survey we also included ageneral question regarding howsatisfied competitors were with theevent:

We believe it a fantastic result that77% of competitors surveyed (36


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people) said they were extremely satisfied, furthermore no competitor responded that theywere unsatisfied.

We have also had a fantastic response on Facebook to our content, we have seenseveral massive spikes in the clubs post reach both in the lead up to HvZ and in theaftermath specific figures will be detailed further later on.

We believe Humans vs. Zombies has had an overwhelmingly positive impact tocommunity perceptions of Rotaract. During our regular recruitment drive on Clubs Day weasked people if they had heard of our event and our club a significant proportion of the

people we spoke with had, which is a stark difference from previous years.

Distinctiveness of the task or project:We believe Humans vs. Zombies to be an incredibly distinctive event. Humans vs.

Zombies is still in its infancy in Australia, our event was the first time it had run successfullyin Wollongong and the first time it had run in New South Wales for some years. As outlinedearlier Humans vs. Zombies offers striking visuals and has made for a quirky good newsstory. The best way for us to illustrate this point is to share some images taken on the day andexplain the people in them and their significance.

Competitors begin assembling at the start of proceedings we had a few keen beansarrive the second registration opened at 8:30am.


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A group of competitors get ready before the start of round one. The competitor on the

far left has come armed with socks which many players used when zombies got in closeabout to make the final strike.

Our treasurerAlex Jessupcreated thisfabulous logoand also createda stencil whichwe applied onthe bags withacrylic paint.One of thecompetitors

looks menacing,note bandannaon head, he is

your enemy!


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We were honoured to have Local State MP for Keira, Ryan Park (pictured left) presentto open the event, Aidan Simmons, event organiser and current UOW RotaractPresident (pictured right) took the bulk of the emcee duties for the day

This war cry from competitors could be heard hundreds of meters away at the CSEmain offices. For any concerned, as you can see Nerf weapons are not realistic looking,at all.


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Tiarna Cunial, the non-Rotaractor original Zombie, came all made up and hasinformed us that next year she is considering the use of prosthetics to make her

transformation to one of the undead more realistic.


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The UOW Rotaract Club is also indebted to Charis Dobbs for her assistance as ChiefMakeup artist for the day. A large portion of competitors got right into the spirit ofthings and were made up to look fantastic.

One of these was UOW Rotaractor and original Zombie Craig Dunne, who hasappeared in many of the press photos/coverage we have had!


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A combination of strong, colourful and vibrant visual images mixed with the quirkyand offbeat nature of the event has made it an extremely distinctive undertaking. In a busymarketplace like UOW (which has 90 other clubs operating) recall is a hard thing to achieveas is the ability to cut through noise. The fact that we have managed to achieve this speaks

volumes to the task performed.

Modes of raising awareness and recognition receivedThe primary medium used to raise awareness of this project and our club has been

social media, on which as outlined earlier, we have had phenomenal successes. Throughoutthe lead up to the event the club also maintained an event blog which was filled withresources for competitors and used to push out press releases. The primary avenue used tocommunicate with competitors has been through an event page set up by the UOW RotaractFacebook page which can be found here. This event page allowed us to have directinteractions with those seeking more information about the event and to energise thoselooking to come. An example of this was the following post: Two weeks to go fellowhumans. If this post gets over 30 likes, we will release a teaser section of the map with ahandful of checkpoints on it! #hvzatuow , this post got 32 likes and as promised we did asmall map reveal, which garnered 11 likes.

Under the new Facebook insights in the lead up to Humans vs. Zombies the clubreach had peaks of between 250-320, this increased the day before which saw a rise to 574, to

put it into context these are fairly strong numbers in their own right as our reach usuallyhovers in the hundreds. This pales in comparison for the figures recorded in the aftermath as

praise came in from the competitors and our image galleries were littered with likes and tags.The highpoints of the campaign were spikes of 1,238 and 1,421 on the 5 th of July and the 7 th.Shown below are the insights for the month prior:

Coupled with our Social Media exploits we also made extensive use of word of mouthsales and in the week before the event went on a promotions blitz. Members of the

promotions team set up out the front of the UOW Library, during hours of high foot traffic(usually 11-2pm) and handed out literally hundreds of event flyers. Flyers were also
http://humansvszombiesatuow.wordpress.com/https://www.facebook.com/events/127008290827388/https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/hvzatuowhttps://www.facebook.com/hashtag/hvzatuowhttps://www.facebook.com/hashtag/hvzatuowhttps://www.facebook.com/events/127008290827388/http://humansvszombiesatuow.wordpress.com/


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distributed during any regular event we ran and posters were placed around UOW, includingones placed prominently at the UOW Unibar front counter. A copy of this poster is includedon the next page.

Recognition received for Humans vs. Zombies came in the form of strong mediacoverage. The night of the event we featured in our local television news bulletin, huddledround the TVs in the Unibar a cheer went up from the event team and a few competitors whowere watching. The following morning we woke up to find our event on the front cover of thelocal paper (shown below) with an accompanying article featuring prominently in the paper.Since then Humans vs. Zombies and UOW Rotaract has featured in two other articles one can

be found here and the other can be found here. We have been blown away by the amount ofcoverage and the praise heaped upon the club. One of the most outstanding pieces of

coverage we received wasAidans blog post for the

official End Polio Now blog. This article was linked onFacebook and has at time ofwriting 345 likes and 114shares, including shares fromthe official Rotaract Page. Following this coverageUOW Rotaract picked up 12likes overnight the single

biggest jump that we haverecorded. In the space ofapproximately three monthsthe club has had a massiveincrease in total likes,growing from 206 to 261.We also received recognitionthrough comments from theLord Mayor of Wollongong,Gordon Bradbury, Ryan Park

MP for Keira and PeterDoran the head of the clubs

program at UOW, thesecomments can be found here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=php3UrMYlXYhttp://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/1617905/gallery-zombies-on-the-march-in-wollongong/http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/1679979/back-from-the-dead-the-rise-of-zombies-in-the-gong/http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/1718941/illawarra-rotary-fellowship-helps-polio-fight/http://www.endpolio.org/blog/polio-eradication/2013/08/27/rotaract-members-fight-zombies-to-end-poliohttps://www.facebook.com/rotaractor/posts/10151849015615797http://humansvszombiesatuow.wordpress.com/2013/07/06/post-event-comments/http://humansvszombiesatuow.wordpress.com/2013/07/06/post-event-comments/https://www.facebook.com/rotaractor/posts/10151849015615797http://www.endpolio.org/blog/polio-eradication/2013/08/27/rotaract-members-fight-zombies-to-end-poliohttp://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/1718941/illawarra-rotary-fellowship-helps-polio-fight/http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/1679979/back-from-the-dead-the-rise-of-zombies-in-the-gong/http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/1617905/gallery-zombies-on-the-march-in-wollongong/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=php3UrMYlXY


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These posters were printed in A5, A4, A3 and one in A2 and placed around campus orhanded out to passers-by.


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During the month of June the UOW Rotaract updated our Facebook page frequently,filling it with information about Humans vs. Zombies as well as information about RotarysCampaign to End Polio. We were also fortunate to leverage off the strength of resources atUOW including the Student Life page who shared our event and the featured event tab on the

UOW Current Students page where our event lived for about a month. The Club alsoexperimented with a new medium it had not tried before and made an infographic about theresults of the campaign that was well received.

Effort of the Club in Raising Awareness of RotaractHumans vs. Zombies was a lot of work, but it has been a labour of love, I have

wanted to run this event since early 2011, this year I finally did and it was awesome, Aidan Simmons. As we have outlined Humans vs. Zombies was an event that took atremendous amount of logistical work. The campaign was maintained for literally months and

pushed hard by members of the UOW Rotaract Club. It was an event that was promoted atliterally everything we did for the start of the year. But the end results of fantastic presscoverage, strong social media growth and engagement have made it more than worthwhile.

Results AchievedThe net earnings for Humans vs. Zombies totalled somewhere in the vicinity of

$2000, of this the UOW Rotaract Club donated $1500 dollars (after costs) to the Rotary

Foundation to go towards the End Polio Now campaign. We were overjoyed to have met ourfundraising goals for the event, proving that an event which was fun and vibrant could also befinancially successful. Humans vs. Zombies also achieved its other key aims of broad mediacoverage as has been detailed in this submission, it has left the UOW Rotaract club in astrong position with many contacts to draw on for our next major event. Since Humans vs.Zombies the UOW Rotaract club has worked closer than ever with the Centre for Studentengagement and are seen to be one of the strongest clubs on campus. The only aim Humansvs. Zombies did not achieve was final player numbers with 90+ taking part, which was shortof the 150 we wanted, however now with proof of concept and an energised player base weare certain that HvZ 2 will exceed all expectations and be even bigger and bolder than thefirst one.
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HvZ Award Submission

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