Southeast Students Create "Most Interesting Man" Video to Promote capeSF

Southeast Missouri State University students Coleman Bonze, Caleb Dunn and Ryan Bolinger, under the direction of Dr. Jim Dufek, professor of Mass Media, created a viral video for the Cape Girardeau Storytelling Festival.

Brittney Ruopp, capeSF Marketing intern, found a commercial online starring "The Most Interesting Man in the World". The capeSF marketing team spoofed that commercial and came up with a viral video. The goal is to upload it onto YouTube, then email it, Facebook, Tweet it, and share it in order to generate buzz about capeSF that makes sense to the festival--as a fun, entertaining event.

"I contacted Dr. Dufek's university students because I thought they would be the perfect crew to handle our video needs. I wanted to create something that would package the festival in a fun quirky way so that the 18-40 demographic would know that capeSF is an event that is meant for them. The spots do that in a big way," says Stephanie Lynch, Director of PR and Marketing for the Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau, primary sponsor of capeSF.

The video, stars Dr. Joel Rhodes, History professor at Southeast, and co-producer of the Cape Girardeau Storytelling Festival and features Kelli Wille and two students from Gamma Sigma Sigma, Casey Hinkebein and Amanda Carter. You can find the video on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

"The video shoot was a lot fun. We shot it at The Library bar in downtown Cape Girardeau. The whole experience was something I'm going to remember for a long time," says Brittney Ruopp, intern for the Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau and capeSF.

Today's Newsletter

Today's Newsletter

Diary of Volunteer Michael Willis

As I began my sixth semester at Southeast Missouri State University, I had no idea what the semester had in-store for me. I had just finished up an 18-hour, stressful, fall semester and was ready to have a more relaxing semester. I had hoped to go to class every day, but not spend so much time outside of the Lambda Chi Alpha house as I did the semester before.
Little did I know that this semester was going to give me an opportunity to use my marketing skills in a real-world, business-like environment.

One afternoon in Dr. Sandipan Sen’s Consumer Behavior class, he talked about another option that the class can do instead of doing an individual project for the end of the semester. He mentioned working with the Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau with their April event, the 3rd annual Cape Girardeau Storytelling Festival. Dr. Sen talked about how our big role in this viral campaign would be to network through Facebook and Twitter. Immediately I made a note to e-mail the Cape CVB.

After e-mailing Stephanie Lynch at the Cape CVB, my viral marketing campaign began. I began to invite my friends to the Facebook fan page and I thought I was on-route to an “A” at the end of the semester. After inviting my friends to the event, I posted my progress to the progress log using DropBox software, and sent an e-mail to Stephanie stating that I’d be willing to do any additional work that she may need me to do.

I can honestly say that e-mail was the best and most important e-mail that I have ever sent out.

Stephanie contacted me about becoming the project leader for the viral campaign. Being a project leader meant that I was the “go-to” guy for the other marketing students if they had any questions or concerns with the project. Stephanie would send me information, and I would pass it along to the other virtual volunteers through e-mail.

My Facebook campaign grew spontaneously. After a week’s time I had joined over 40 Facebook fan pages and had sent out numerous links to these fan pages promoting the Cape Girardeau Storytelling Festival. In the weeks following, I noticed the fan base on the storytelling festival Facebook page grew past 500 and is currently approaching 700. It was at this point that I truly learned the power of internet in today’s business world.

With the viral marketing campaign going strong, I truly feel that this year’s storytelling festival will be a great time for everyone. I think the popularity will grow more as the festival approaches. I hope the biggest change in this year’s storytelling festival is more attendance from the college crowd and more people from bigger metropolitan cities (Saint Louis, Kansas City, etc.). All the work that is being put into the preparation for this year’s festival will help make future festivals bigger and better.

I think it is a great idea by the Cape CVB to let the Southeast business students take part in this experience. I can testify that the work I put into the festival has shown me that what we as business students study in the classroom really does apply to the business world. Being able to take what we learn in class and immediately apply it to the storytelling festival has made the classroom material really stick in my mind.

Diary of Intern Brittany Meek

Preparing for entering the real word can be quite intimidating. It is difficult to imagine life without 2 jobs, 6-day work weeks and late-night study sessions, but as graduation quickly approaches, thoughts of the real world are quickly becoming reality for Brittany Meek, Public Relations and Marketing Intern at the Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Throughout my undergraduate career, I was very curious about how public relations was handled outside the classroom. Are practitioners really writing press releases and learning about online social media? Are they pitching new ideas to clients? Am I going to be prepared for a career in public relations? How long am I going to have to get coffee for my boss before I can be the boss?

After quite a bit of research, I made the quick decision to apply for a spring internship at the Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau. My last semester has brought a few challenges, but I decided to leap for the finish line and put everything I had into learning how the CVB handles public relations, communication and the planning and execution of the Cape Girardeau Storytelling Festival.

Working with the CVB has provided me with many opportunities because instead of working with many clients, as many interns do, I have had the privilege to work with one big client—probably the most important one in this area. My focus and biggest gains have included invaluable hands-on training including event planning, social media and volunteer recruitment.

One of the best and most rewarding things I have worked on thus far is creating and maintaining a Twitter feed for the Storytelling Festival, @capeSF. Social media tools like Facebook and Twitter have a multiplier effect in the marketplace, and my job has been to continuously look and monitor at this area in a more dedicated fashion. In short, I have been the capeSF’s social media journalist, reporting in 140 characters or less what’s happening at the CVB and at capeSF. Once more people take advantage of the social media platforms; I believe businesses in Cape Girardeau will jump on the bandwagon.

Being an intern, full-time student and working part-time, the only constant is change—not only in daily schedule, but in daily work requirements. Versatility is essential, whether it’s writing a press release, contacting news media, assisting with Skype interviews or meeting with downtown business owners. This internship has offered the most diverse daily opportunities. It has given me daily hands-on practice with marketing, social media management and user engagement—skills heavily sought after by employers who are often desperately trying to understand the online media space. But most importantly, it has built my confidence about my fast approaching transition into the “real world.”

Diary of Intern Brittney Ruopp

Walking into the Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau on day one of my internship, I was slightly nervous and didn’t know what to expect. I opened the front door and saw a room, dimly lit, wooden panels on the walls, the sound of classical music playing in the background, and the morning sunshine beaming through the tinted windows. The warmness of the atmosphere made me feel at ease. “Hi there”, says a smiling red-headed woman as she walks up to me. “How are you, what can I help you with?” I find out her name is Betty, the administrative assistant. She wasn’t expecting my arrival, but regardless, she asked me to sit down, make myself comfortable, and offered me a drink. At that point I felt at home and I knew I was definitely going to like it there. Betty is one of those women who you just instantly like; she’s charming, funny, sarcastic, and full of spunk. Then I meet Stephanie, the Director of Marketing and PR who I will be working closely with throughout my internship. She’s a sweet, witty blond who is extremely creative, passionate and determined. You know you have a cool boss when she tells you that you can work from home, stay in contact through Yahoo! Messenger, and that Facebook and Twitter are a necessary part of your job.

Working with Stephanie has opened my eyes to new experiences like shooting a viral video at the Library; the bar, not the one with books. Yes, in four hours on a Saturday afternoon, Stephanie, me, Southeast History professor Dr. Joel Rhodes, three SEMO film students (Coleman Bonze, Caleb Dunne and Ryan Bolinger), and three great student actresses (Kelli Wille, Casey Hinkebein and Amanda Carter) created four hilarious videos to promote the Cape Girardeau Storytelling Festival to students on campus.

As a graduate student studying Public Administration, most students like myself, don’t get the chance to write video scripts, lead meetings with campus organizations, or employ social media networks. In fact, nearly everything I’ve done has been a new experience and an opportunity to learn. This internship has given me the ability to make new connections on campus with organizations like Advertising Club, Photography Club, Capaha Arrow, Gamma Sigma Sigma, Alpha Phi Omega, and art and film students. They have been an integral part of getting the word out about this year’s Storytelling Festival. Planning for the festival coming up in April, there is a copious amount of work to do. I feel like the work I’m doing is meaningful and making an impact. I have no doubt that what I have learned in the past few months are skills that will help me land a great job when I graduate. Even better, working as an intern doesn’t feel like just another job—it’s fun. Every day has been something different, and for me, that is why I enjoy working with the Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Cape Girardeau Storytelling Festival. See you at the festival! Buy tickets my friends…

What's the Story?

It’s difficult to explain a storytelling festival.
What is it? Who’s involved? Why should I go in the first place?

Believe me, if anyone knows what a storytelling festival is, it’s Betty Roth, one of the coordinators for the Cape Girardeau Storytelling Festival. She has had her share of storytelling festivals and has visited several to understand the logistics of running one. What kind of tent to use, how to fix the seating arrangements, what should be included in the program, that sort of thing. Betty will have you cackling about her experience at the Cave Run festival in KY (it rained) and smiling about her experience at the Athens festival in GA (yep, it rained, again). As Betty puts it, “You’ve got three generations of people sitting in the front row laughing from the gut about the same story—and they all get it. I love to watch the people get it.”

We hope that this year, capeSF fans will still “get it”, and we’ve got six great storytellers that will stand on stage rain or shine and perform stories that will truly entertain you.

Take storyteller Donald Davis for example. He was a featured teller during our first festival in 2008 and has returned again this year. His stories speak to the heart of growing up in the south. Most people can relate to him simply because his stories are just so darn funny. But more importantly, his stories resonate with a wide audience simply because he talks about the kind of major story themes that most stories come from, whether those stories are television shows, books, or films. I’m referring to themes like coming of age, his family, his relationship with his mother, and his attempts to define himself outside of his family sphere. These are the themes that all good stories come from, no matter the medium.

But, I know what you’re thinking. That sounds great, but why should I go to capeSF? Why should I believe that storytelling is great entertainment just because storytelling is coming to Cape Girardeau, MO?

Let’s just look at other places then shall we? California, Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia all have highly successful storytelling festivals. They attract upwards of 10,000 people at the largest festivals. In fact, the National Storytelling Festival based in Jonesborough, TN, is going on its 37th year and has grown into an event that is now one of the Top 100 Events in North America.

But let’s cut to the chase. “Storytelling” is a genre of performance—no different than rock and opera are genres of music. Storytelling as a performance is featured at festivals, like capeSF, it is featured on radio shows like NPR or BBC radio, it is also featured as podcasts that are served to your email inboxes, and it is featured in pubs and coffeehouses in major cities across the U.S.

The trendy method of storytelling—through podcasts and live events in big cities—is something that is expanding the concept of storytelling as a performance genre. For instance, themoth.org started in someone’s living room and now has syndicated to monthly shows in and around New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Detroit. Storytellers get together to tell and listen to real-life stories. These tellers could be anyone from the actor Sam Shepard to just your average Joe off the street. Afterwards everyone gathers to trade stories over drinks and dinner, and the organization sends out monthly podcasts of the recorded stories.

The Cape Girardeau Storytelling Festival is simply good entertainment, no different than enjoying a comedian or one-man/one-woman show. The tellers tell stories from their own lives just like a major one-named performer. The stories range from funny to sad to quirky and sometimes remind you of your own life. A performer who relays their message in a form that the audience can relate to is simply a good performer—whether that’s a storyteller or a singer, and the storytellers that we book for our festival are some of the very best performers in what they do—they tell stories. In a sense, a storyteller performs a motion picture film, only you don’t see the actors and you don’t see the sets. You see everything the storyteller is telling you on the screen in your mind.

Telling a story that someone else can “see” in their own mind is a gift. It is an ability that takes years to craft. These tellers not only have great stories to tell but they deliver them on stage. Sure, your uncle Dave can tell a great story, but can he stand up on stage in front of 1,000 people and perform it? That’s what our tellers can do. They can tell a tale, deliver it with gusto and entertain a packed house. So, let’s pack the house for this year’s tellers on April 9th, 10th, and 11th. You’ll love every minute of it. That’s our story and we’re sticking with it!

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