All right, I think we are good to start. So good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Redefining a Rivalry, the Power of Collaborative Alumni Engagement. Thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Mary Sansone. I am the Senior Associate Director of Engagement Marketing for the Harvard Alumni Association. I am also a member of the District 1 Cabinet and this year's District 1 Conference co-chair. Today's session is hosted by District 1 Cabinet. And for those who might not be familiar, the District 1 Cabinet is a volunteer body that represents the North Atlantic region of the United States and Canada. If you're interested in representing your region as part of this volunteer body, whether it is the North Atlantic region or someplace else in the United States, you are always welcome to send a message to districts at case.org. So a few housekeeping items. Today's session is going to be recorded and shared with everyone who is registered. It will also be available on the learning platform that CASE offers. There will be time for questions toward the end of the webinar, and we ask that you hold your questions until that time. And with that, I am excited to introduce our presenters today. So also joining from the Harvard Alumni Association are my colleagues Melanie Phan, who is the Associate Director of Engagement Communications, and Christiana Casaletto-Lozzi, who is the Digital Content Strategist of Engagement Communications. Mouthful names over here for us communications and marketing folks. And then from the Yale Alumni Association, we are excited to have Stephanie Stephens, the Deputy Director of Yale Clubs and Strategic Initiatives, Carissa Violante, Associate Director of Communications and Marketing, and Jamie McCormick, Program Coordinator of Communications and Marketing. Thank you to our presenters for being our key players today, and I'm excited to hand it off to you. Thanks so much, Mary. Hi, everybody. This is Stephanie Stephens from the Yale Alumni Association. And if you've watched any of our videos, you know that is my common greeting when we open up all of the fun things that we do with Harvard as it relates to the game. Since so much of what we're talking about today can actually be viewed on Instagram, we invite you to go ahead and grab your phone in between sips of water and your lunch that you're naturally eating during this seminar. And go ahead and follow us on Instagram because you're going to be able to check all of the work that we've done there and follow along in all the fun that we have together. So as we get started today, I'm going to just give you a tiny bit of background about the game, which we commonly refer to as just the game. And everyone at Harvard and Yale knows exactly what that means. No further description necessary. So the game is more than just football. It is a very significant alumni engagement opportunity for both Yale and Harvard that happens annually every November, very close to Thanksgiving traditionally. We alternate between the bowl at Yale and the Harvard Stadium at Harvard and Cambridge. And fun fact, you may not know, this past year was the 140th playing of the game. The only year that the game was not played since its inception was in 2020. And that's sort of where this story all begins. My responsibility actually at the Alumni Association is to regional clubs. And regional clubs host watch parties around the world every single year for the game. And during COVID in 2020, we saw that the Ivy League wasn't going to be playing the game. And that was a huge blow for everyone who liked to gather around this special occasion, both for Yale and Harvard. And Chris and I started having conversations about what we could possibly do to still sort of celebrate that landmark in the calendar, to provide some normalcy, to really celebrate the Yale community. And we went really heavy on digital engagement at that time. And we created a show earlier in the year called Yale Alumni Live. Yale Alumni Live was basically just like what everyone else was doing in the world, was digital engagement through storytelling on Instagram and Facebook. And we decided that we would use that tool that we had created earlier in the year to really examine the game and what made it special. So we decided to host a two-week-long series of activities virtually that really honored the game. So what we did was interview previous players from the football team, cheerleaders. We talked to the restaurant on campus, Morey's, you may be familiar with, and asked them to host a online cooking demonstration of one of their favorite meals that folks come back to Morey's for during the game. We talked to the pep band. We did a tour of the stadium. We did whatever we possibly could online to remind folks that this is still a big part of our experience and a way to bring folks together. So we did that virtually in 2020, and it was a big success in lieu of the game. In 2021, when the game was hosted again, finally, it was hosted at Yale. And Krista and I said, what should we do? We can't leave behind our online audience. Like many of you, we tried to find ways to do things both virtually and in person as that slow return started to happen. And we decided that we would shoot our shot, a lot of sports puns here today, shoot our shot with the athletics department and ask them if they would allow us sideline access so that we could cover the game, color commentary, if you will. And so that's really where this partnership was born. In 2021, Krista and I did live sideline coverage from the game, lots of fun interviews with parents and players talking about what it was like to return to the game and what it meant to be back in this environment together. We did the same thing in 2022 at Harvard, and we had a lot of fun. Our colleagues in Yale Athletics were really instrumental in getting us on the sidelines. But Krista and I had a moment where we said, what would really elevate this? We've done this for two years now. And we said, naturally, elevating this program would be talking to our colleagues at Harvard. And so we decided to reach out to Melanie and Christiana and Mary and say, what do you guys think about working together on this program? And from there, this new iteration of the game plan was born. So I'm gonna turn it over to Krista to share with you a little bit about what we started to do when we started collaborating with Harvard. Yes, so for us, for the game plan, we really wanted to make sure that when we were teaming up with Harvard, we were leaning into this cross-institutional collaboration. So for us, right, we know that a lot of our audience is cheering for both teams, and we were thinking about ways that we could really leverage that and excite both of our audiences. We also wanted to be really mindful about what was happening in current events and how we could transform a head-to-head rivalry into an atmosphere of celebration and camaraderie. So we were ready to team up in 2023. We began with a big brainstorm session, and we really encouraged each other to share any and all ideas. During this session, nothing was off the table, and that really allowed us to dream big. We could be really creative in finding ways to lean into that collaborative celebration, and we could build something really incredible for both our audiences. It was also really important to talk through how we worked individually and how we worked in our existing teams. And since Stephanie and I had two years of experience with previous sideline coverage, we were able to offer insight into some of the more unpredictable factors like cell service, battery life, weather, access to alumni who might be roaming around the stadium. And once we understood all of these factors, we were able to refine our ideas into manageable, attainable tasks that you see here. Sourcing alumni stories from families that cheered for both teams really helped us build excitement in advance of the game. And since the game was held at Yale Bowl, our Yale team worked with our partners in athletics again to gain access and all the necessary passes, while the Harvard team handled their own travel logistics. And since we didn't have to travel as far that day, we had a headstart filming for this central Yale-Harvard trivia video, which was the key part of our collaboration. And we were able to hand off that footage to the Harvard team when they arrived for editing. And we also made sure to set aside time for both teams to independently roam around and capture Yale-specific and Harvard-specific content that felt authentic to the content we have been producing previously. Thanks, Carissa. For 2024, we really evaluated the content from the previous year, what worked, what we wanted to do a little differently. And with that, we produced even more content in 2024, adding a Harvard Stadium tour video ahead of the game, a fun club's watch slash viewing party video showcasing our alumni club volunteers who hosted a watch party, and also a fun face-off video with our executive directors on game day. But similar to 2023, we both sourced alumni stories, which Jamie will speak on more in the next slide. And since 2024 was a home game for us at Harvard, we had more time to edit and produce content ahead of the game, like our club watch slash viewing party promo video, which we both filmed with our alumni club volunteers and Christiana edited. And then our YAA colleagues were able to film and edit a Harvard Stadium tour video the day before the game. And then we both filmed and edited our executive director's face-off video earlier in the day of game day. And since it was a home game for us and a bit busier on our end, our YAA friends edited our tailgate tribute video. And we helped get access and tickets for the Yale alumni colleagues to make it as stress-free as possible since they were the one traveling this year. So a little bit about how we, the transformation from 2023 to 2024, it was really exciting. And we were able to gather a bunch of different content based off of 2023 to build on the campaign. And now I'm gonna pass it over to Jamie who can discuss our Harvard-Yale alumni storytelling campaign. Wow, so for community storytelling, we really wanted to highlight the Yale and Harvard and the game connections between families, loved ones, friends, and it was just another great opportunity to engage alumni. So we received a nice collection of unique stories and relationships from alumni and a great response from our audience who enjoyed hearing from their fellow alums. So in order to make this happen, which we did both in 2023 and in 2024, we put out a call to both alumni communities in advance to share their stories. And we each highlighted two to three stories each year and worked together on scheduling and cross-collaborating on social media to share with both audiences. And the community storytelling really enforced the connections and friendly rivalry between our schools. Now I'll pass it off to Christiana. One of the most fun and engaging elements of our joint campaign was creating videos that we could cross-collaborate on. In 2023, it was our first year collaborating and we created one video together which was a Harvard-Yale trivia video that featured alums and students from both universities. And we'll play a short clip of that video now. Who won the first Yale-Harvard football game on November 13th, 1875? It must be Harvard. Harvard was too good. What do you guys think? Who won, who won, who won? I'm gonna guess Harvard. Yeah, I think it was Harvard. Harvard, let's go. Hometown team, you're right. Good job, guys. Yeah, let's go! In 2019. So on game day in 2023, when the game was hosted at Yale, the YAA team went out early to film all of these trivia clips ahead of their other tailgate responsibilities and game kickoff. And then the HAA team spent the second half of the game editing these clips together so that we would have a complete video to share online at the conclusion of the game. This video was then shared to the HAA Instagram account with the YAA added as collaborators. This way it ensured that the video appeared on both of our pages and reached both of our audiences. So after a successful campaign in 2023, we decided to think a little bit bigger in 2024 and planned for four different pieces of video content. Since Harvard was hosting this year, we switched roles and the HAA led editing content ahead of the game, whereas the YAA led editing content on game day. One of our pieces were our watch and view party promo videos. We both were able to find three alumni volunteers who were willing to take part in our pass the hat video. The concept came from a viral trend. We utilized alumni that were on campus already for an event and we avoided creating a complicated script. So this was a really easy lift and we'll play that video now. Are you ready for some football? The 140th playing of the game will be hosted this year at Harvard stadium, but not to worry if you can't make it to Boston, make sure to head to one of the amazing gatherings being held all around the world. I'm viewing the game in San Juan with the Harvard club of Puerto Rico. Let's go Harvard. I'm watching the watch party in San Francisco. Let's go Bulldogs. I'm viewing the Harvard Yale game in Southern California with the Harvard club at Southern California. I'm watching the Yale Harvard game in Los Angeles. I'm watching the game from Durham, North Carolina with the Harvard club of the research triangle. I'm watching the game from Manuel's Tavern in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm watching the Yale Harvard game with the Harvard club of the research triangle. As you just heard, there's no shortage of ways or places to celebrate the game. So grab your gear, get ready to have a great time for this iconic showdown. So after both of our teams filmed our clips, we shared them in a shared Google drive and then the HAA took on editing the video and posted it again with the YAA as a collaborator. On game day, we filmed another trivia style video with alums and students and the YAA took lead on filming and editing that to be shared collaboratively at the conclusion of the game. And one new video concept we had to feature was showing off our respective alumni association leadership. So we took that theme of school rivalry and had our executive directors answer popular questions about our institutions and communities. And we'll play a clip of that video now. Hey football fans, this is Stephanie from the Yale alumni association here with both the Yale alumni association executive director, Alison Cole and the Harvard alumni association executive director, Sarah Carmon. We've got a fun game for you today. We want you to weigh in in the comments of what you think. Are you guys ready to get started? Let's do it. We are, let's do it. All right, what school community has the best pizza? I mean, I think there was a congressional decree about kinetic New Haven pizza, right? Sarah? I mean, you can't go wrong with Pinocchio's but I do think New Haven has good pizza. We'll go to Pinocchio's next time I'm here. Exactly. Which school? So for this video, the HAA and YAA teams met in one location early that morning of game day to film. And we both used our respective pieces of equipment that we had brought together. This video was then edited by the HAA team to be shared later in the week after events had concluded. So we concluded our 2024 joint collaborative campaign with six alumni stories, three from Harvard, three from Yale and four collab videos. And I'll pass it over to Carissa to discuss about how all of us performed. Thanks Christiana. So yeah, final score. Let's take a look at the results. We were all very, very excited about the innovative work that we have done together, but the real magic is understanding how this new collaboration performed. Since so much of our coverage was posted collaboratively, both Yale and Harvard saw increased content performance, which was great news for us. Together, we saw 583,000 impressions on the game content in 2023 and compare that to 69,000 for Yale and 123,000 for Harvard in the year prior. So that was like a huge increase. All of those views are fantastic, but much more importantly, we saw an increase in engagement too. That means folks were really excited about the work that we were doing and the content that we were providing and that excitement just absolutely invigorated us to keep going in 2024. In 2023, we saw that engagement soar to 51,000 combined engagements across all of our content and our channels. Compare that to the year before where Yale saw only 2,000 engagements and Harvard had 5.7 thousand engagements. This altogether resulted in an 8% engagement rate for 2023, and that was well above the higher education industry average. That's roughly 3%. So as I said, this momentum kept building for 2024. We saw combined 752,000 impressions, which is a 30% increase from our first year in this partnership. We did notice a slight dip in engagement, which could be due to any number of factors. It's really important for us to monitor changes like this and to learn from this. So while we saw impressions increase, we do need to keep in mind ways to build opportunities to encourage engagement in our content in the future. But we are reassured to see that our combined engagement rate is holding at 5%, which is still above that industry average that I mentioned before. And now I will hand it back to Melanie. Thanks, Carissa. To summarize our content strategy goal, one of our main priorities was on user-generated content. We were able to source alumni stories where alums shared personal tales of their connections to the Harvard-Yale game. We asked for stories through our college alumni newsletter, our alumni colleagues, and through social media. And we also utilized templates from 2023's campaign and the Harvard-Yale graphics from Athletics to ensure our content looked connected and cohesive. And then we also leveraged collab posting to ensure we can amplify our content across both of our channels. And this shows that while this campaign reached thousands of alumni across both of our institutions, we didn't require a large amount of resources to pull it off. And with that said, I'm going to pass it to Carissa and Christiana, who will talk more about the resources we used in this campaign. So we used free resources like Canva and CapCut. Christiana, do you want to talk a little bit about them? Yeah, so I use Canva most often when I'm editing our videos. I think it's really user friendly, and video editing can be pretty intimidating, especially when you're looking at things like Adobe. It can seem a little more complicated, so I just figured let's keep it really straightforward. Even this presentation we're using right now, Carissa created for us in Canva, so it's a really great tool. They have awesome free options that you can use. And then we also use CapCut to find some of those viral sounds and to edit some fun effects into our videos. And then for equipment, we tried to stick to accessible equipment, kind of the same vibe, things that were easy or tools that we already had at hand. So primarily using our iPhones or really inexpensive Bluetooth microphones. I do want to point out that in 2024, we did use some more advanced equipment. Some of those things included things like a configurable cage for smartphones. Both Christiana and I had the same rig. It's called a SmallRig. That's approximately $5,200. We also used DJI wireless mic sets. Those were really, really handy when we were doing interviews and we were able to kind of mic folks up and I could stand a little bit further away to film. Those are a little bit more on the pricey side, running about $350. And then the Shure shotgun mic for smartphones as well that allowed us to capture footage, enhanced audio straight to the iPhone. That runs about $250. And then we also had a LED fill light, not a very small one, but like a larger one that plugs into a battery and can operate kind of independently for many hours. That one ran at about $90. So altogether, you know, less than $1,000 of equipment. But it did really, really enhance the quality of the footage and the sound that we were able to capture. And having that SmallRig allowed us to add like the light and the microphone to the cage so that it was one easy to hold tool. It also allowed us to get some different angles, shooting up higher, filming down lower, and just some steadiness to the footage as well. And now I will hand it off to Steph, Jamie, and Christiana will stay on to chat about some other options if you don't have a game. Thanks, Carissa. I'm sort of sitting here laughing a little bit because I'm sure that there's a moment where everyone thinks like, okay, who else? What else? What else was there? But all of the things that Christiana and Carissa just described, I think really speak to how nimble we're able to be in putting together this whole collaboration. If anybody is on this call from Harvard or Yale or happened to attend the game, you probably saw it was literally the four of us. Jamie was back at the ranch helping out from home. But the four of us just running around these two stadiums looking for the best sound, avoiding the rain, avoiding the wind, really trying to make this as authentic as possible. And I think that is one of the things that is really important in what we were able to accomplish together is that it wasn't really scripted. Obviously, trivia is scripted, but we were having fun in the moment. And that's what we would encourage you to do as you sort of reflect on this campaign and how we put this together and what you might be able to do at your institution, whether it's with a rival turned friend or within your own organization or across campus. There are many ways for you to be able to do this sort of coverage with the tools that Carissa and Christiana just described with someone who's willing to get in front of the camera, albeit accidental. For me, it was never my intent, but it's turned into something that's been really rewarding and really engaging for our alumni community. So we have some examples here of some other sort of events that Carissa and Christiana have, which events that they've been able to put together similar videos to share with you. And then we can talk a little bit about in the question and answer portion about how you might be able to do this because we recognize that folks are from different backgrounds within alumni engagement, marketing, communications, people who are a little more interested in the tech, people who might be more on the engagement side. We're happy to talk about all of that with you because we do think that this is absolutely replicable and you can have a lot of creative, innovative ideas around what's going on at your own institution. So I think Christiana is going to walk us through the Harvard video here with Sasha, and then Jamie's going to talk about the Handsome Dan video on the right. So go ahead, Christiana, over to you. Awesome. Thank you. So as Steph mentioned, a lot of this stuff can be replicated at your schools, regardless of if you have a game or not. There's a lot of different opportunities, and one of those biggest opportunities is taking advantage of Instagram's cross-collaborative posting. The ability to co-post on Instagram has really been a game changer for our engagement. We're always adding other departments and schools from our university as collaborators on content to reach a wider audience. When planning our content, we consider popular figures that we can utilize to make it more engaging. One example of this was during our Harvard Moves campaign, which encourages Harvard community members to get active and share their stats. To drive registration up, we collaborated with Harvard's community engagement dog, Sasha, and we showed some of her favorite ways to move and get active. So we'll play that video now. Hi there. I'm Sasha, Harvard's community engagement dog. I want to invite you to join me for a fur-tastic event, Harvard Moves, from November 7th to 10th. There are so many fun ways to get moving, like playing in Harvard Yard, running up and down the stadium steps, taking a walk, playing soccer, dancing, playing basketball, swimming, and getting in a good workout. I recently attended my first Pawlotties class hosted by Harvard Recreation, where I got to move my body in different ways and perfected my downward dog pose. When I'm not on campus, I get moving by swimming with friends, going for hikes, and just playing some fetch. No matter how you choose to participate, sign up today to join in on the fun, November 7th through 10th, during this pawsome event. Christiana, those Harvard Stadium stairs are not for the faint of heart. I did do that, and that is a hard workout. So I think there needs to be an asterisk next to that. Yeah, that one's not for the weak-hearted, and Sasha definitely is not. She has way more energy than any of us ever could. But a majority of those clips that we featured here were actually content that Sasha's handler already had in his camera roll. He just passed them along to me, and I edited those clips together, and I used a free voiceover effect in CapCut to create Sasha's voice. And then we co-posted with Sasha's Instagram account, which is like a really popular, illustrious account on campus. And Sasha's handler loves making content, so that was a really engaging piece and fun piece for us. So I think this just proves the point that sometimes the best collaborative content can come from within your own institutions. So I'll pass it over to Jamie. She's going to talk a little bit more about how to create content that's an easy lift by using viral trends, simple equipment, and featuring their iconic mascot. Thank you, and yes, Christiana was saying some of the best videos and collaborators can come within your own institution. So for example, our video was created in advance of last year's reunions to promote our hidden Handsome Dan activity at reunions. So this is where we hide little Handsome Dan toys for alumni to find and keep around campus. And we put a little tag on him, which encourages alumni to share their favorite reunion memory with us. So this is another fun game to do with reunions and another engagement piece for alumni to do while they're at reunions, but also share their memories with us, which we can share with our broader audience. So this video leaned into internal collaborations with our visitor center and our mascot, Handsome Dan, as well as his handler. And so we were able to take advantage of the viral trend featuring Adele's song, Someone Like You. So we can play that video now. So it's just great to be able to collaborate with other internal departments and also always a treat to interact with Handsome Dan, who himself has an impressive number of followers on social media that we were able to take advantage of as well. So we saw there were a bunch of questions in the comment. And Mary, I think, is going to take us through those in just a moment. But I did see one for Carissa. And the one I would like to address right off the bat is how many, from Maria, asked, she's curious, how many people worked on this and for how long, the four of you across two campuses. And so we're it. We're the team. I know that Melanie and Christiana had some support from another department, which I'll let you guys discuss. And then Jamie also supported us on the marketing team at the YAA. But this is kind of the point, friends, is that you can do this with not a huge staff. You can do this with simple-ish tools. I know Carissa had one tool she mentioned that had maybe a bit of a sticker shock for some of you. But for the most part, the first year that Carissa and I ever did this, it was about as bare bones as it gets. And so, you know, you learn and you grow and you figure out what are those little tools. As far as how long we worked on this, Carissa, how long would you say we really, maybe in those first couple of years, we planned our content maybe six weeks out? A lot of it is a little, a lot of it can be challenging based on what sort of access you're granted. But obviously, when you're talking about collecting alumni stories, that's on your own timeline, however much time you need to both collect those and write those based on your staff time. But, you know, game day, what sort of access you're going to have can be a little tricky. And that's why we find it so critical to be so nimble and to work with just your iPhones and one or two colleagues that really can kind of giddy up and run with you. So, Carissa, do you want to add? And then obviously, Melanie and Christiana, you can jump in as well. Yeah, I mean, I would say definitely leading up to game day or whatever that critical event would be if you don't have a game, we had a few small planning meetings that were maybe investing three hours of time total in planning. As Stephanie mentioned, gathering those editorial pieces, we made it really easy and seamless by creating a template. We standardized the questions and the approach. So we would share a link and have alumni kind of self fill that out. And then for us, it was just really dedicating a little bit of time to the editing process. It was maybe less than cumulatively an hour per story. But the game day, that would be the really time intensive part. On the home games, we were here pretty much from like eight o'clock in the morning all the way until the end of the game, which could have been early, could have been like 6 p.m. So it's a little unpredictable. And you're working kind of the whole time. So it's about being able to be adaptable and pivot, whether you're spending that time capturing footage, or you're spending that time editing, or you're spending that time sourcing stories. You're kind of always doing something. So those days are long. And then post event, there is a little bit of time dedicated to file management and storing like where you're going to put those files. And I know Christiana mentioned that she and I both worked on some editing pieces with collaborative footage. That also really kind of happened post event. Same day, but post event. So maybe like 6 to 9 p.m. editing a video, making sure the captions were correct, sharing that around for approval and sign off of everybody on the team. So, you know, it's a little bit of a light lead up, but then really heavy during the event. And then afterwards, just those final pieces. And I'll just add on the Harvard side, while it for the collaborative piece, it was the people on the screen now working together and strategizing. We are lucky that we work with amazing colleagues in our FAS communications that were with us on the day, gathering content on the field. And we collaborate with that team a lot. And so this could be just gathering pictures, some recap images that we can share after the game or during the game. And so a lot of components of the content strategy for the game, because our alumni love it. It's definitely a nostalgic major piece in the history of Harvard. But yeah, I think that it was really fun, very collaborative, all of us. We definitely would share videos at like 6 p.m. the night of the game, just in a group text, and be like, how does this look? Should we cut this or stitch this? So it's very collaborative. We didn't need that much of resources and it was very fun. And Christiana, is there anything else that we should add? Thank you guys, covered that pretty well. So I'll pass it over to Mary. Yeah, thank you guys so much. What a fantastic presentation and really a wonderful collaboration between our two schools. There's a couple more questions in the chat that I can read off to you guys. But if anybody also wants to raise their hand and I can call on you to unmute, you're welcome to ask questions that way as well. But the first question is, how did you calculate the engagement scores that you shared? Oh, fun. Well, for us, we have a tool called Sprout Social. So we were able to get a lot of our metrics from Sprout Social. And we were able then when we had our numbers, Christiana was fantastic in giving me the Harvard numbers. So I'll let her speak to how she got those. But then it was just a matter of combining those numbers and figuring out the average. So I'm very thankful that we have a tool that does a lot of that math behind the scenes for us. I understand that that's a paid tool and not always an available resource, but I do know that a lot of these platforms have baked into them native analytics opportunities as well. So I would say definitely you can glean a lot of information natively if that's how you're managing your social metrics as well. Christiana, do you have anything to add? Yeah, I'll just add that we also used a social media tool to find our engagement rates and numbers. So during 2023, we were using a platform called Hootsuite, which works very similar to Sprout. And this year we now have Sprout Social. So these have built-in ways to find your engagement rates, but we also tend to just go directly into the platforms and you can pull those analytics directly from your content. Great, thank you. Another question is, has there been any incorporation of annual giving into this strategy? I was waiting for this one. So I will jump in and then let my colleagues at Harvard share any thoughts they have. So I needed to, and I should have at the very onset of this call, give credit to our colleagues at the Yale Alumni Fund who had for many years partnered with Harvard Alumni Fund. And I'm sorry if that's not the proper name, but both annual funds used to work together on a giving challenge for many, many years. And it took on a couple of different iterations over the years. I don't think this is still happening at present, but I would say that you absolutely have an opportunity to incorporate some sort of giving challenge or annual giving strategy. But I would say the big difference between the giving challenge that had existed previously between our two institutions really leaned into the rivalry and how are we better than one another? Whereas we really leaned into how are we similar? How can we lean on the collegiality of this? Because we do have so many dual degree holders. So that would be the big thing that I would just sort of say is how can you get creative with it, to do it in a different way? Because I think challenges are amazing and fantastic and obviously yield really great results, but we wanted to position this in a slightly different way. So it would be a creative opportunity to think about how you might do that while also leaning into the friendship, the camaraderie of it all, and not as much the rivalry. I don't know if Melanie and Christiana, you wanted to add anything to that, or Mary, obviously, if you don't have any knowledge of anything else that's going on in the annual giving. I can quickly add that our particular team does not oversee annual giving. This is what our colleagues at FAS, who we did collaborate with on this, they were on the scene with us. They oversee a lot of our annual giving and donations and things like that. So they would be able to speak to this a lot better. I'll also nod to our Harvard Boobs event does have a big giving component attached to it. So that was something that we considered when we were creating those Sasha videos and our other content for Harvard Boobs as well. Thank you, guys. One fun question. If there's anybody from Wellesley or Mount Holyoke, Smith would love to do this with you. So a plug for that. If that connection can be made here, that would be very fun. Any other questions, feel free to put them in the chat or to raise your hand. Anything else that while we have all of their time, we'd want to ask them or pick their brain about? I'd also just like to add to that note, it was because of CASE that this idea started in the first place. It was actually Mary and I met at a CASE conference and we were sitting at the same table for lunch and we just started chatting and it was that little spark of inspiration. So I'm really thankful to CASE to be able to kind of lay that foundation. I was able to bring the idea back to Stephanie and she was on board and look at everything that we've accomplished since then. So I'm so excited if people want to make connections based on this call as well. So exciting, get out there, do it. Thanks for that plug, Krista. Yes, it was a very just natural way that this all came together and it truly was a conversation at lunch that blossomed into a really fantastic engagement opportunity for both of our schools. LaTosha, I see your hand up. Yes, I'm LaTosha Priest, Executive Director of Engagement. It's okay, it's okay. I am curious, what is your next iteration? So you have done some amazing things. I'm curious as to how you're gonna try and top yourself next. Well, we were prepared for this question and we're leaving you on a cliffhanger because we're not quite sure what the future holds for this collaboration, but we don't see it ending here. I think it might take on a slightly different life form in the months ahead. We will be headed back to Yale this fall. So we will do our planning over the summer, but we invite you once again to follow both of our socials so you can see what we cook up and what we might collaborate on in the future. But this has had a pretty long life at this point. And so we really have to be creative and innovative this summer to think about what might engage the audiences. And I'm sure that Carissa and Christiana might have some thoughts on this as well. The viewership on socials has really changed in the last several months. And so there's a lot to consider about the environment moving forward and what will make sense for both of our institutions moving forward. So I don't know if Carissa, you have any preliminary thoughts you wanna share, Christiana, but it's definitely, it's had essentially a five-year life for us at Yale. So it's really time for us to flip it on its side and look at it a little bit differently. Yeah, I'll jump in, Stephanie. Definitely the landscape of social media has been changing. And I think it'll be really important for us to think about why our audiences are turning to social and how we can best connect with them and meet them where they are. That was really important in the first part of collaboration working with Harvard, right? We thought maybe we'd lean into rivalry and instead given current events, we decided to lean into collaboration and celebration. And so I think kind of as we see how social media is evolving, right? Collaboration and understanding and listening to our audience, right? Is so important and critical when you're thinking about social media. It is of course important to think about your institution and your mission and your leadership goals, but they have to be in alignment with your audience and how your audience is using the platform and what platforms they're using. I'll just add to that. That's something that Melanie and I really thought about this year as well was our recent graduate audience and how we could utilize them and get them more involved with our content and want to be involved volunteers and alumni participants. And so everybody who was in this year's trivia video was from our recent grad tailgate that was hosted by our department that oversees young college alums. And so we really wanted to make an emphasis on featuring them in our content and reaching out to them ahead of the game to get them involved. So I think going forward, that's something we'll continue to do. How can we utilize our recent graduates who really wanna be involved and really want to participate in these time-honored traditions and give them a voice on our platform? So I don't see another question right now, but there's something that I would like to share for the audience, the folks who are not in digital communications or not in marketing communications, since I'm the odd man out here in this crew representing regional clubs at the YAA. For those of you who are responsible for engagement specifically and not necessarily responsible for your social channels, the video that we produced, the Pass the Hat video, which I thought was a lot of fun, hope you did too, that was a really great opportunity for us at the YAA in particular and HAA to showcase a program, a signature program of both of our organizations that really allows alumni in our clubs to show off what they're doing. So it was a great opportunity for us to say, look at what else is happening. Look what's happening around the world. You don't have to be in Boston. You don't have to be in New Haven. Our alumni communities are alive and thriving all around the world. And now we had some overlap in the folks that were on campus for the videos, but each of us respectively watched parties and viewing parties. Both had, I think, at least over 100 events happening around the world. So it was a way for us to really showcase the other things that are happening at our respective organizations. And so I think these digital campaigns like we've done are a great opportunity for you to look internally in your organization and say, okay, what else is happening around the world that we can showcase on our channels? And so I always am wearing my regional clubs hat when I'm hosting whatever ridiculous thing I'm on the sidelines for and having fun with and trying to think, okay, how can I remind folks that there's things happening every day in their communities and that it's not just about New Haven in particular for Yale. So I was really proud of those opportunities that we created for other aspects of our organization to highlight and showcase what's going on. And with our shared interest groups, similarly at Yale, we can highlight that. So just another, just a plug to kind of think about what is going on that we can showcase through creative videos, creative digital engagement. What other questions do you guys have for us? We have a few minutes left. I have a question. Hi everybody, Dani here from CU Boulder. I love how this collaboration really emphasizes the positive aspects of rivalry. I'm wondering if you handled any negative comments at all and maybe this is just our culture. I'm thinking about our rivalries and how contentious they are. Would you say you really led the way in that positivity and as a result influenced how your audiences responded? That's a very good question. I will let my colleagues here think, but I can tell you that there, I intentionally wore this logo and not my Yale hat and really was a little nervous to be honest with you as I was approaching folks from Harvard for the trivia video. But we really, I don't think we really encountered anybody that was rude or negative in person. I'll let Chris and Christiana speak to anything that happened behind the scenes, comments and otherwise. But I think everyone was really excited to just be a part of this. It was a very positive experience when we all know that it can be very negative sometimes. There's like a lot of shirts that say a lot of not nice things about each of our organizations that sometimes folks wear, but we just tried to keep it positive when we approach certain people. We did approach random strangers in that first year. It wasn't completely scripted, so we weren't sure what was gonna happen, but I really do think overall it was very positive. If you go back and read any of the stories that Chrissa and Christiana produced, there was I think a mom in particular who wrote in about one of her children went to Harvard, one went to Yale and she talked about how she felt like the big winner because her children were respectively having such wonderful experiences. So something like that is pretty heartwarming, makes you feel really good about this initiative, but I think overall positive. Chrissa, Christiana, Melanie, feel free. You guys, was everybody happy? Yeah, I'm happy to chime in. On our end, because we produced a lot of like user-generated content ahead of time, so it was stories submitted by alums, we see fewer negative comments in those personal stories when we're sharing those. As Steph noted, like we have really cute stories of maybe a parent who has kids that are both at Harvard and Yale respectively. And so a lot of people don't really post negative remarks on those types of posts for us. And then for the general content, like the recaps and like the promo pieces, I don't recall anyone leaving negative comments. I'm gonna let me know if you guys recall any of that, but I don't really. I'll just add too, I think we kind of led the charge on keeping it really lighthearted and fun. And I think our executive director video speaks to that. We kind of came up with this list of questions based on things that you'll often hear back and forth, like Harvard always hears that we don't have a mascot and that's a whole thing. And Yale has the best mascot, he's adorable. So we kind of poked fun at that and the rivalry between Boston Pizza versus New Haven Pizza. And so I think we just kind of set the tone with the content that we put forward. And so it kind of kept everybody else kind of silly and lighthearted. I think Carissa mentioned this earlier, we kind of turned it more into like a celebration rather than a rivalry. Even with our stories in 2023, we had like framed it like families. So, I mean, like you love your brother who goes to Yale and your sister who goes to Harvard, you guys will poke fun at each other. So I think that's kind of what our rivalry feels like, like siblings fighting where you're not really fighting and mom and dad will come yell at you when you stop and it's whatever. But I think we kind of led the charge on keeping it lighthearted and fun and that kept those maybe negative comments and things that would have come at bay. So yeah, I think if you're looking to do something like this and there is a bit of negativity like Giants-Eagles, for example, those New Englanders, people know that rivalry is pretty brutal. If you keep it positive and lean into what you have in common, the love of the game, I mean, right in the title, I think then it stays fairly positive. You all are welcome to go back and look at those posts and take a look at the comments. We didn't filter anything out. It's all still there. I think this last slide has all of our contact info. Carissa, if you wanna like pop that back up there, it has both of our channels for you to check out. We welcome you to go look at these videos and provide us with any feedback or thoughts that you might have about what you see that you have questions about. Thanks, Stephanie. And I just echoing going to see those posts on social, there are some really just beautiful stories of couples who are rooting for different teams and we call it the house divided series and we've gotten really good fun banter in a response to that. So definitely on a really positive light. I think we might have time for one more question if there is anybody else who have a question, otherwise we can wrap this up. Great. So just a few just reminders. So first, just on behalf of the Case District 1 Cabinet, thank you for everybody who joined us today and a special thank you to Melanie, Christiana, Stephanie, Carissa, and Jamie for sharing all the details about this campaign, which is an award-winning campaign through Case. They did win a circle of excellence for this work over the summer. And I hope that you all are leaving today inspired and ready to redefine a rivalry in your institution or spark up a collaboration with a different department. For those of you in the North Atlantic region, registration for the District 1 Conference in Boston next month is still open. So if you are interested in attending, visit the Case website to learn more and to access that registration. District 1 programming will also continue throughout the spring, so please keep a lookout on your inboxes for more programs from us. And there's also an upcoming events listing on the Case website for anybody who is looking for District 1 programming or programming across all the different districts. And with that, thank you everybody and I hope you all have a wonderful afternoon.

collaborative alumni engagement

Harvard-Yale football game

digital content

social media

alumni stories

community engagement

Canva

CapCut

positive connections