On January 1, 2014, North Carolina passed G.S. 105-164.13(27) which allows sales tax on sales and use tax for the sale at retail and the use, storage, or consumption in this State for food and prepared food served to students in dining rooms regularly operated by State or private educational institutions or student organizations.

This new tax law was a hit to UNCG Dining (Chartwells Higher Education at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro) and its ability to successfully sell meal plans to the on-campus and off-campus students of UNCG. The change took away from the sales of retail and residential dining locations as money did not stretch as far as it previously did without the tax. Many of the meal plans included a declining balance of money known as flex. The largest selling point of a voluntary meal plan (VMP) is that since these meal plans are not mandatory for students and a large source of revenue for companies like Chartwells and for campuses that outsource their dining services. To add customer value to meal plans, the UNCG administration decided to take away time frame for students to use their flex. Previously, students received their flex amounts from the meal plans that they chose each Fall. The amount of flex that was left over then rolled over to the next semester. With the university’s changes, the flex money would not be compromised. Rather, it would roll over into an account that would be accessible to the students until they were no longer actively enrolled at UNCG.

My goal was to make the meal plans noticeable again and to increase the sales of non-mandatory meal plans. Near the end of the Spring 2014 semester, students were raving over a popular rap song by the duo Rae Sremmurd named ‘No Flex Zone’. I created a marketing campaign centered around ‘No Flex Zone’ known as #foreverflexin to bring awareness of the new UNCG meal plan policies to the student body and their parents. This hashtag was used on social media throughout the campaign to garner attention to the new program.

The program needed visual aspects to connect the message to my millennial audience. To graphically convey the messages for this program, I created two logos. The original #foreverflexin logo features a flexing, athletic man with the head of the school’s mascot, the Spartan. In the recharge program (an annual program that encourages students to add funds to their low flex accounts), the mascot “bulked” to reflect an “over flex” or over use of funds before the end of the semester.

The most popular way that I garnered attention from the UNCG students and staff was the use of apparel. The #foreverflexin tees and tanks were a huge hit! Many students signed up and participated in events on campus to earn one of the coveted shirts.

#foreverflexin became the name of the students' roll over account. The campaign catapulted the UNCG Dining social media followers, growing Facebook followers by 25%, Twitter followers by 20% and Instagram followers by 10%.