Research Project:

The Vidette

MKT 232
May 1st, 2018
Kelsey Franklin, Cuauhtemoc
Mendoza, Emily Chiarello, Matt
Olson, Ali Hook, Myia Agustin,
Kevin Madsen
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Table of Contents

A. Executive Summary​​……………………………………………………………………...2

B. Introduction to the project/Purpose of the project​​…………………………………….3

C. Qualitative Research (Focus Group)​​ …………………………………………………...4

D. Quantitative Research (Survey)​​ ………………………………………………………...6

E. Conclusion​​ …………………………………………………………………………….…9

F. Appendix​​ …………………………………………………………………………….….10
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Executive Summary

The Vidette, which is the campus newspaper for Illinois State University, is currently

experiencing brand recognition and brand awareness problems. The primary audience that the

Vidette is targeting are Undergraduate and Graduate students who attend Illinois State

University, but they want to place an extra emphasis on freshmen and transfer students. They

also get a considerable amount of international views, so they are targeting International Students

as well. The sections of the Vidette that get the most views are Crime and New Openings such as

when Portillos opened. The main questions that the Vidette wishes to know are why students

aren’t following them on social media, picking up the paper, and what type of content the

students look for in the newspaper? They also want to know why students are not interacting

with them on twitter even though they have over 6,000 followers. The main goal of this project

that the Vidette is hoping to accomplish is to increase their overall brand awareness. In order for

us to help the Vidette resolve their brand recognition problem and help them to achieve their

main goal, we need to first establish the source of the problem and figure out why Illinois State

University students are not familiar with the Vidette. When conducting both qualitative and

quantitative studies throughout the semester, our group has heard from many of ISU’s students

regarding their knowledge of the Vidette. Members from our group sent out a survey to

multiple different RSO’s and the residents of Cardinal Court. We only received 41 responses to

our survey, however we gained sufficient insight on some of the main issues that the Vidette will

need to focus on. For example, according to Graphs 4&5 below, 85% percent of respondents

answered that they had previously heard of the Vidette, however 85% of the respondents also

answered that they did not follow the Vidette on any Social Media platforms. Leading us to a
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key issue on Social Media viewership that will be discussed further later in the paper. When

performing our qualitative studies, we held a focus group, and had multiple casual interviews

with many different students who were walking in the halls of the College of Business. When

speaking with these students, we asked a variety of different questions, many of them asking

about what the students would enjoy to see in their newspaper, and what would make them

actually take a physical copy from a stand. Many students responded to this saying that they

would take a copy if there were coupons in the newspaper. We gained a great deal of insightful

information when speaking with these students that will be covered more in depth.

Introduction to the project/ Purpose of the project

Our research project was centered around The Vidette, which is Illinois State

University’s school newspaper. The Vidette came to our Marketing 232 course in search of

answers to what it seemed like bottomless questions. One of the major concerns for that the staff

explicitly stated was the issue of brand recognition. The two representatives from The Vidette,

stated that many students are no longer interested in the newspaper. During The Vidette

presentation, we collected possible questions that would require extensive research that would

hopefully bring us to a solution to solve the brand recognition issue. Many of the questions were

centered around content, channel and the age of students across campus. We wanted to know the

type of content that would grab students’ attention, what is the best channel to gain readers and

what ages were typically reading The Vidette. All of these questions were asked via focus groups

and surveys. Collectively, we believe we have conquered the major issue of brand recognition

for The Vidette.

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Qualitative Research

Qualitative Method/ Interview guide

The methods used for our interview process was fairly simple, we looked up the number

of students on campus then separated by gender, major, and year in school. We reached out to

these students, and from the few that came, they were rewarded with Giordano’s Pizza. The rest

we began to gather students from Schroeder, College of Business, McCormick, and Stevenson.

We had a very diverse group and we began asking questions. We managed to gather around 20

highly engaged respondents and around 30 casual respondents and these were the results.

Findings/implications from Qualitative research

We asked several questions but the ones that gave us the best insights were these three. How do

you receive your news? What news are you looking for? What would it take for you to pick up a

physical copy of The Vidette? Now, most student receive and read their news through social

media, like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or phone alerts from their apple or android phones.

From the students we interviewed, many knew of the Vidette, however many did not actually

read the Vidette. It seems as if many students aren’t reading for leisure or to be informed, this

issue is not just limited to the Vidette, but all other media and newspaper outlets have been

rolling back their physical platform, and focusing in on a more mobile and online platform. Now

what are students looking for in their news? For the students who do want to be informed they

are looking for news about current politics, local, state and government. They want to stay

informed with policies that directly affect them in the short and long term. They also want to

know about all events going on at ISU on any given day or week. There is so much going on at
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ISU it would be extremely difficult to keep up, we think there should be a direct link between the

Vidette and all RSO’s so they can keep everyone informed. Another side note they said would be

interesting if they highlight regular students weekly or whenever the Vidette is published to

promote school spirit and unity. It would make students selected feel special and be happy to be

a redbird. It feels like the campus only get excited for team sports and the paper focus on that

aspect of school and not the rest of average-joe students. Now our final question we saw value in

was, what would it take for you as a student to pick up a the Vidette. Our responses were varied

but these two was the most frequent: content and coupons. Students LOVE coupons, so when

they reach for a Vidette they want to see what the can get that’s free or discounted. Now the

Vidette isn’t a coupon book, which is why content is important, the students who didn’t just pick

up the Vidette for coupons, want to be informed with information unique to the campus. They

want to read things you won’t find in the google search bar. Lastly when we were doing our

casual interviews, a few people mentioned an interesting point that we thought was worth noting

in our research. The students want diversity in the Vidette offices, this came from students and

current Vidette workers that said they feel this is an issue that should be resolved and it would

definitely make great impact to the paper. They feel as if the Vidette doesn’t have much diversity

throughout it staff. We aren’t too sure how true this is because we aren’t familiar with the staff,

but coming from an actual staff member, it holds weight.

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Quantitative Research

Quantitative method

For our project we created an online survey that was distributed to different RSOs and

residents of Cardinal Court. This would be considered a convenience survey because it was sent

to organizations that our groups members were a part of. We received 41 responses and gathered

all of the data into a spreadsheet to analyze our responses.

Findings

We found that, when ranking different types of articles that could be reported on in the

newspaper according to importance, people were most interested in reading about entertainment.

Entertainment was closely followed by Current National Events. The average response for

Entertainment was 4, and the average for Current National Events were 3.98. People were least

interested in Politics, which averaged a response of 2.8. These rankings were on a scale from one

to 5, one being least interested and 5 being most interested. These results are shown in a Graph 1

at the end of this section. We also found that 82% of those surveyed most frequently receive their

news through Social Media. The results of this are shown in Graph 2 at the end of this section.

However, with most people receiving their news through social media, only 14.6% of our

respondents actually follow the Vidette on Social Media. However, 81.6% of people said they

would follow them if they offered promotions and giveaways. We also found that 44.1% of

people have heard of the Vidette through social interactions either with friends or through word

of mouth. Another significant way they know about the Vidette is by seeing it around campus

either through posters, Festival ISU, or seeing newspaper or newspaper stands. About 29.4% of
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our respondents have found out about the Vidette through these ways. These results can be seen

in Graph 3 located at the end of this section.

Implications/Recommendations to Management

Looking at our results for the survey we can see that there is a clear problem with the

Vidette’s presence on social media and the importance of the web with this generation. While

this could seem to be a clear indication of where the Vidette needs to improve, our responses also

show us that the most common ways that students hear about the Vidette is through real life

interactions, such as their friends, professors or at festival ISU. Another interesting statistic from

our survey responses implies that more people would follow the Vidette on social media if they

did promotions or giveaways. With that being said, the best recommendations we could make is

that the Vidette needs to increase their activity on the web while also using physical methods to

make their social media accounts more well known. Lastly, using the results, the best advice we

can give on helping out the social media account is to focus more of the funds on promotions and

special giveaways that students can participate in.

Rate the following on importance to you (1 - least important, 5 - most important)

Graph 1
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How do you most frequently receive your news?

Graph 2

Graph 3

Graph 4
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Graph 5

Conclusion

The Vidette came to us with a problem at the beginning of the semester, and throughout

the course of the semester we have found some answers to the large number of questions they

had. The Vidette is currently experiencing a brand recognition problem. Through our market

research we were able to come up with some answers for the Vidette. With our findings, we

found out that many students knew of the Vidette but never actually physically grabbed the

newspaper nor followed it on their social media. One major thing that can help the Vidette grow

their social media presence is by having contests on all of their social media platforms. Overall

this will increase the number of followers that they have, and their presence on social media

Hopefully the market research that we have conducted throughout this semester will have an

impact on the Vidette, and assist them in solving their brand recognition problem.
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Appendix

Focus Group Interview Questions:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CYptdMUokqB4ScnvZ0h_kDDZDrWt6M6awjiWQ_Wu
VuU/edit?usp=sharing

Survey that was sent out to students:

https://goo.gl/forms/Mssy3VnVYhJ7jdGc2

Survey Questions:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VKRuufXAwAIP1hoPuEw2jU3BN2YHEymhQxyxRIaL0
ek/edit?usp=sharing