Why start the year off with a to-do list that often never gets done?
Let’s be honest. More often than not, resolutions fall apart before the end of the year. We make every effort to get to the gym, eat better or travel more, but by the end of the year, we’re back to where we started.
While your students are likely off campus for the winter break, ringing in the New Year with their own resolutions, we thought it would be a good opportunity to reconnect with them in time for the new term, poke some fun at the tradition while showcasing all the unpleasant things you WON’T do for your customers with New Year’s Anti-Resolutions!
Picking your anti-resolutions
An anti-resolution is more or less something you vow not to start doing. They can be humorous or they can be serious, but they should ultimately showcase things you were never planning on doing in the first place. While some can just be for fun — who doesn’t love to read a good joke, after all? — others can showcase ways your store lives up to its mission statement of providing the best possible service for students.
This is an opportunity to showcase, in an indirect or humorous way, how your store is the only place they can use financial aid, or how any book they buy in-store is what they’ll need for class. It can also be a good way to promote a price-match guarantee. What better way to say you won’t do something than to say you won’t be undersold? Of course not every store out there does one, but they’re not as cost-prohibitive as you might think.
Need help coming up with a few? Don’t worry, we’ve got some examples you can use in the way of images you can post to Instagram and Facebook.
Even the humorous ones can highlight ways you strive to serve students, such as the above promise to stock up-to-date, fashionable items in your store’s spirit wear section.
And setting up a price-match guarantee is a terrific way to promote confidence and trust from your students while capturing more market share.
Invite students to write their own anti-resolutions
Your store doesn’t have to be the only one to have fun with a new twist on an old tradition. Boost engagement on your social media sites and keep your store on students’ minds while they’re home for the break with a contest for students to write their own anti-resolutions! Invite students to submit what they plan on avoiding for the following year, anything from vowing not to be hit by a car or to not run a 5k. It will take some monitoring to make sure you remove any responses that may be inappropriate, but you can offer a store gift card or another prize for whichever response gets the most likes.
You can use these social media posts and header images to promote your contest, or this poster to promote your event in-store and around campus.
Plan a sale or giveaway on key resolution items
While you’re taking the slightly ironic approach to the New Year’s Resolution, many of your students will likely have more serious promises they make to themselves. Since fitness and weight loss-related resolutions are routinely at the top of the popularity list, you could also hold a sale, raffle or give-away for items students would want to kick-start their own New Year’s Resolutions, like Fitbits or workout apparel.
