In 2020, Syracuse University turned 150 years old. Our birthday was March 24, 2020, to be exact. One week prior to our sesquicentennial, many years of planning for in-person celebrations went out the window, and we turned to an entirely digital week-long celebration. The only avenue we had to engage alumni for our milestone birthday was via social media.
We refer to our birthday as National Orange Day, and the week surrounding it as Forever Orange Week. Given the world climate and current events, a strictly social approach to Forever Orange Week turned out to be tremendously successful. Through a series of videos, live interviews, crowd-sourced content, mascot coloring pages, and more (some of this had been planned prior to the pandemic; some was added when we went all-digital), we successfully reached more than 1.25 million users via content on the #SU150 hashtag. Members of the Orange family all over the world were able to participate in a birthday celebration like none they had experienced before!
From the Judges
Syracuse had to transition a milestone celebration with little notice at the beginning of the pandemic. They were extremely creative from the start, and the impressions and engagements highlight their success. We like the Syracuse “S” in photos to showcase several alumni. Other institutions could replicate this effort.
