Microsoft and marketing to college students

Seattle PI article on Microsoft's (and other companies') use of student ambassadors (peer-to-peer marketers) on campus. When I was in school, they were marketing perfume knock-offs, magazine subscriptions and naughty t-shirts about UCLA. Now it's software. I guess I could tell all of the college kids that OneNote rocks (sorry, it just does...that and InfoPath are my favorite Microsoft products), but the college kids simply don't want to hear it from me.

And I want one of those t-shirts too (the OneNote one, not the naughty one).

Comments

• Anonymous
  November 07, 2005
  There are actually two programs this year. There is the Microsoft Student Ambassador program focused on promoting the Microsoft platforms such as .Net to students. There is also the OneNote Campus Representative program focused solely on OneNote. The programs are different in their incentives, requirements and goals. For example, OneNote Campus Representatives actually have to achieve so many downloads to get their incentive. Microsoft Student Ambassadors, on the other hand, are under no obligation to do anything after they receive their award which consists of what will be the replacement for the MSDN Universal subscription, shirt, plaque, and more.
  
  Apple has a campus representative program as well, and I found it interesting that both Microsoft and Apple partner with Volt to manage their programs.
  
  For more information on the Microsoft Student Ambassador program, the site is http://www.studentambassador.net.
• Anonymous
  November 14, 2005
  Hey Brant...thanks for the additional info!