Student brand ambassadors market products on campus

To market their products to students on campus, companies are utilizing a novel approach: employing the students themselves.

More and more companies are hiring brand ambassadors — students hired to market their products on campus — each year.

Companies who have hired brand ambassadors to market products at UNC include NASCAR, Zipcar, Colgate, American Eagle Outfitters and many others.

Businesses like these recruit students, sometimes based on their social media savvy, and pay them hundreds of dollars to pass out coupons or give away products for free.

And the trend has some University administrators worried about the commercialization of campus.

“There’s certainly nothing wrong with students working for companies, but when the circumstances lead to people believing that the University is somehow sponsoring the organization — we need to get on top of how big of a problem we really have,” said Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Winston Crisp.

Students are being employed because they are often the most effective salesmen of businesses’ products, said David Hamrick, a brand ambassador for NASCAR, CouponCabin and Colgate.

“To really reach students effectively on a campus where they have free things being handed to them every day, you need to be a little creative and a little more memorable,” Hamrick said.

Crisp said he doesn’t know how many brand ambassadors there are at UNC.

“I don’t think that anybody has done — or I certainly haven’t engaged in — any systematic attempt to count that,” he said.

But administrators said they are conscious of the problem they present.

Don Luse, director of the Carolina Union, said commercialization is hard to regulate.

“We try to use good judgement in terms of access to this closed community and not make it something so that every time you turn around you’re not being solicited by someone, but it’s sometimes difficult to do with coupons and handbills about things,” Luse said.

Rick Bradley, assistant director of housing, said the fact that brand ambassadors are students presents problems of regulation.

“Carolina students are on the campus and are allowed to wear American Eagle clothing while they’re assisting students to move in,” Bradley said.

“If they are providing a service to students, we prefer that they not solicit students or encourage them to buy things.

“We don’t have any policy that would forbid them from doing that.”

Brand ambassadors often market products through established student organizations, including fraternities or sororities or Campus Recreation.

Lindsey Stephens, president of the Panhellenic Council, said the council does not regulate how brand ambassadors operate within Greek chapters as long as ambassadors understand the council is not endorsing the brands.

“They are free to do whatever, and if it is an interest to them, then they should go ahead and do it,” Stephens said.

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