Want to fly American Airlines for free? Consider a campus representative position, whose benefits include business and marketing experience in addition to special offers, discounts and free merchandise.

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Cristina Bautista

Companies from Apple to American Airlines are reaching out to students to push products.

Organizations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Teach for America, Uloop, American Airlines, Mountain Dew and Foundations for Educations (f4ed) hire students to market their products and publicize their campaigns through flyers, emails and information sessions.

“I am like a cheerleader for Uloop”, said Kim Anderson ‘10, who works for the college exchange Web site that employs 120 campus representatives from universities across the country. Her main job is to get students excited about the site and get the word out at Stanford.

Companies often give campus representatives a lot of freedom to organize events in the way that they choose.

The American Airlines campus representatives have organized various events at football and basketball games and sponsored Habitat’s Run for Humanity. In November, they hid 250 envelopes containing flight discounts around campus for students to find.

The Mountain Dew campus representatives held various sampling events throughout campus and organized a campuswide competition to create Mountain Dew related products to win cash prizes. The Apple representatives throw launch parties and have been involved with Dance Marathon and other regular Stanford events.

These events aim to attract loyal, lifelong customers. “American Airlines has identified our demographic as a key demographic moving forward,” said campus representative Peter Finlayson ‘07, who enjoys free American Airlines tickets. “As we graduate and go out into the world, we are going to be the next generation of business and world leaders. By appealing to college students now, hopefully we can secure their loyalty in the future.”

Recruitment is another important part of a campus representative’s job. “The main job of campus reps is to recruit employees from the student body,” said Barbara Mazina ‘09, an f4ed representative.

Willy Chu ‘08, a campus representative for Mountain Dew, said that his job sometimes faces administrative obstacles. “There’s a lot of red tape involved when marketing for a corporation unrelated to any Stanford student group,” he said. “Finding ways around the policies was a roadblock unexpectedly added to our load.”

A lot of the campus reps become involved in these companies because they have been loyal customers of the products. Jeff Seibert ‘08, a campus representative for Apple, said he had always loved the company’s products and had wanted to work for them since the beginning of high school.

Some students choose to continue working with these companies after graduation.

“There are lots of positions available at Uloop after and before graduation for those who are passionate about the Web site,” said Anderson.

Finlayson also works as a campus representative for the Stanford Alumni Association (SAA).

“I have watched my role at the SAA grow and develop to the point where now I am helping develop their marketing strategy for the future and helping them incorporate the latest online tools into their daily operations in many departments,” he said. “It’s been tremendously rewarding for me and amazingly valuable for them.”

Campus reps are trained in general marketing strategies, ideal times to advertise and what kind of attitudes to display to people about the company. Such a job provides these students marketing and business experience much earlier in their college careers.

“The experience gave me an initial exposure to marketing and brand building, which has proved valuable,” Chu said.

Moreover, as Mountain Dew representative Jerod Alrich ‘08 said, “It is a great way to get to know people and it looks good on your resume.”