Pictured: Kristine Lim (left) and Emily Taylor (right), two of the Egg’s first cohort coined “Founding Chicks” (all identified as female) tabling at the UD Involvement Fair. I designed the Egg stretch tablecloth and first-generation program brochures and photographed this time capsule shot.
Hatching new ideas
Creator and Program Director of The Egg, a student marketing agency and creative incubator where we crack into creative at the University of Delaware.
The Egg program video was filmed and produced by Egg multimedia supervisor Kirk Smith. The video is ongoing work with The Egg multimedia team.
Brand
Creative Services For Students, By Students
The Egg Student Creative Agency is a professionally advised marketing and communication team for our clients. For our student staff, we are an experiential professional development program and creative incubator centered around communications and marketing.
Although we are a primarily remote operation, we boast a tiny headquarters in the Perkins Student Center, a hub of student life on campus. This puts us in a unique position to support the Division of Student Life spaces and programs.
The Egg experience drives students’ internships and part-time employment opportunities, fostering their creativity, marketing, communication skills, leadership, and professional development while making services accessible to a vibrant community of student organizations and the Division of Student Life.
The program logo utilizes the trademarked UD Blue Hen for RSOs and was designed to look like it was cracking out of an egg by supervisor Kirk Smith.
Project Brief
Objective
Hatch an “eggducational” student marketing agency where Blue Hens explore their creativity, gain marketing and communications skills and walk away with an impressive portfolio poised for employment.
Project Type
Student Marketing Agency and Creative Incubator, Experiential Professional Development Program
Role
Program Founder and Director
Collaboration Partners
- Egg Supervisors
- Student Life Leadership & Directors
- Office of Communications and Marketing
- University Partners
Program Materials
When “The Egg”— inspired by our Blue Hen Mascot — began to take shape, a brochure was needed to help launch the new program. To summarize the new marketing agency’s vision, “creative services for students, by students,” the brochure had a two-fold purpose (pun intended).
Purpose one — First and foremost, The Egg serves a vibrant community of 400+ student organizations, including fraternities and sororities, and assists with professional marketing and communications work for Student Life.
Purpose two — the student marketing agency offers student employees and interns real-world professional development, preparing them for a career after college while delivering experiential learning through a customized creative track curriculum provided through the Egg Academy.
Naturally, the brochure’s shape would be precisely that: an egg to show off the program’s fun and creative aspects. The brochure was custom die-cut to achieve this shape. The cover boasts an illustrated Blue Hen. The back page has the program’s tagline, “Where good ideas hatch,” with a call to action pointing viewers to the program’s website. Inside, the design plays on that tagline, utilizing the hatch concept with a “crack” splitting the page. The first page describes the service offering. The second page, “The yolk of the program,” explains the professional development offering and creative tracks — both pages invite users to the same call to action on The Egg website.
The Yolk of The Program
The Egg began as a pilot program in the 2018-2019 academic year within the University Student Centers, with one professional staff and one student employee quickly growing into a team of five with an impressive output.
In 2019-2020, the program began its first official year, expanding to two professionals and nearly fifteen students by year-end, and was poised to have an agency space built in the Summer of 2020. When the pandemic hit in March 2020, the in-person agency was halted. The architect’s plans were scrapped as funding, and the targeted location was reallocated. The program shifted gears in 2020-2021 to an entirely remote model as communications within the division were centralized to a single office.
Despite a change of direction, the program has grown to a team of nearly 30 primarily remote student employees. These students aid the needs of the Division of Student Life and its 20+ functional departments and areas, along with serving as a marketing agency for a Registered Student Organization Community of 300+ groups. As of 2022-2023, the program is led by me as a program director and six additional professional staff supervisors. The program hosts graduate students, students abroad, all-years of undergraduate students, and five teams (art and design, web and UX, multimedia, content marketing and project management).
I designed and dreamed up the content for the “Path To Eggcellence,” a program overview and student guidebook. Full content is viewable on Flipbook by Issuu.
The Egg Academy website is a custom-built e-learning platform designed by Egg web/UX supervisor, Sean Diffendall and me. LinkedIn Learning powers most of the educational content. Supervisors curate content for their respective areas. I also provide and develop programmatic content for the platform and work to expand its offerings and audience.
Egg Academy & Creative Ops
The Egg Academy (our custom-built e-learning platform) supports a professional development program of this size while staff and students maintain a complete professional marketing and communications workload. Various in-person workshops and creative instruction-style learning opportunities complement the educational offerings.
After the institutional rollout of LinkedIn Learning in early 2022, most tailored resources and custom content tracked on our e-learning platform now leverage that fantastic resource. However, we still tailor content to match program expectations and customize it to meet program needs when content isn’t available or ideally suited. We manage student work exclusively in Asana, our team’s project management software. We intake all projects from a single intake form to support 300+ Student Organizations as our capacity and bandwidth allow.
Award-Winning Program
ACUI is the professional home to thousands of campus community builders worldwide, primarily focused on the work of those within the college unions and student activities field. The Steal This Idea competition includes categories for professional and student work.
2023 ACUI Steal This Idea Awards
First Place
- Promotional Products (Professional): University of Delaware; Egg Promotional Products; Abby Phillips
Third Place
- Digital Campaigns (Professional): University of Delaware; Finals Week Coffee; Kirk Smith
- Signs/Banners (Professional): University of Delaware; Mental Health Walk Yard Signs; Ivan Avila
- Multi-Page Publications (Professional): University of Delaware; Path To Eggcellence Booklet; Abby Phillips
2021 ACUI Steal This Idea Awards
First Place
- Brochures – Professional: Egg Brochure (Abby Phillips)
- Interior/Wall Art- Professional: Esports Arena (Abby Phillips, Collaboration with Horizon AVL)
Third Place
- Miscellaneous – Professional: Involvement Fair Infographic (Sean Diffendall)
- Social Media Campaigns – Student: Behind the Mask (Sarah Boekholder and Ashley Logue of The Egg)
- Websites – Professional – Esports Website (Sean Diffendall and Abby Phillips)
*Note: We did not enter the 2022 competition due to significant program changes as we centralized under the Division of Student Life.
Other Projects
Cloudberry Farm
Mingo & Main Makery
