C3: The Future of Morehouse's Content
THE PROBLEM
Morehouse College has 8 key stakeholders: students, parents, faculty, staff, alumni, donors, the Atlanta community, and the broader Black community. Moreover, Morehouse hosts events that attempt to appeal to one or more of these personas. As a result, the sheer volume of weekly events engulfs the College, and creating content relevant to multiple personas is a tall task. We cannot physically be in two places simultaneously, so we needed a solution that scaled our reach as a College.
THE SOLUTION
In a past life, I was the 89th Student Government Association (SGA) President at Morehouse College. Since freshman year, I knew I wanted to be SGA President- I wanted to wear the suits, give the speeches, and experience that leadership development. All praises to God, I was elected as President on March 2, 2020, and then BOOM… COVID-19! I was devastated. It took so much work to get to this point, and now, my presidency was behind a computer screen. Yet, remaining steadfast, honest, and true, my cabinet and I got together to brainstorm on how we could still serve the institution despite a global pandemic. After weeks of ideating, we created the Morehouse Media Week (MMW). MMW was a one-week creative camp where we invited roughly 15 students and 4 creators to serve as models, photographers, and filmmakers to produce pandemic-relevant content for Morehouse College. Because the world as we knew it had been turned on its head, we needed signage of students wearing masks, virtual tours, etc. MMW content was then packaged and submitted to Morehouse’s Office of Strategic Marketing and Communications (OSMC).
Fast forward to March 1, 2023, and I began my role as the Content Manager (Copywriter) at Morehouse College. In my interview for the role, my manager at the time and I saw eye to eye in developing a content group of current students that assisted the OSMC in content creation. Sound familiar? We landed on the name Campus Content Creators, also known as C3, and the rest was history.
“Sound familiar? We landed on the name Campus Content Creators, also known as C3, and the rest was history.”
THE EXECUTION
I started developing the C3 structure the moment I started my role. I had a lot of the framework already from MMW, so the transition was much smoother. In April 2023, we interviewed roughly 40 students and later onboarded 15 students skilled to varying degrees in photography, videography, and graphic design. We hosted virtual sessions over the summer focusing on the Morehouse Brand Guidelines, marketing principles, content creation, and more. Year over year, we have refined our vision, sharpened our tools, and increased equipment capacity and production value. At the time of this article, we have scaled to over 25 content creators emphasizing photography, videography, graphic design, and creative writing. The program is in its 3rd cohort and has mentored over 50 students from across the Atlanta University Center (AUC) since its inception.
THE RESULTS
Before C3, Morehouse struggled to capture the sheer number of events that were on campus. Now, with over 25 content creators, we have students everywhere with cameras capturing all of the stories that are going on at the College. Moreover, the students enjoy the work. C3 has not only been a space where our students develop their portfolios, but it is also a creative network of like-minded individuals who learn and build with each other.
If I zoom in on the impact of C3 just during Morehouse’s 2024 New Student Orientation (NSO), the team produced six timely, NSO-related posts (4 Reels, 2 Static Posts), increased our Instagram followers by 847, our engagement by 72% with our current followers, and by 199% with non-followers. C3 works, and I believe that it is a model that can be implemented at all institutions, specifically HBCUs.
C3’s impact has caught the eyes of many of our stakeholders, and Cam Kirk, in particular, has been pivotal to the program’s development. Cam Kirk is a multi-disciplinary creative, Morehouse alumnus, and the owner of Cam Kirk Studios in Atlanta, GA. Through his studio, Cam Kirk has provided resources, master classes, and even a $10,000 donation to the program. I am beyond proud of the trajectory of C3. When I started at Morehouse College, our Instagram page had 66K followers, and now, we are nearing 100K followers. I cannot pinpoint one thing that can be credited for our increase over these past 2 years, but I can say that having C3 helped.
