Xavier Flyaway: What’s With All the PROMO Hype?
As a new student at Clark Atlanta University, the first things I saw were party fliers. They’re everywhere! Whether being passed out personally by members of numerous promotion teams or just seeing them on the ground all over campus, these fliers outlining college parties stuck out. I began to wonder about these different promo teams: Why were they there? What exactly do they do? What’s the profit? To satisfy my curiosity, I inteviewed with a Clark Atlanta senior who goes by the alias Xavier Flyaway, the CEO of Flyaway Universe, one of the most successful college promotion teams in the AUC.
Q: What impact do you think campus promo teams have on college life?
X: I see college life as being 50% educational and the other 50% social. Bringing people together, especially freshman, in a social setting is crucial to college life. It’s about networking and meeting new people and parties are a great way to do just that. Most promotion team’s jobs’ are to promote local parties by means of passing out fliers, social networking, and mass texts. They play a huge part in just making sure everybody knows when the parties are, how to get there, what the theme is, and who is hosting the party.
Q: At this point what exactly does Flyaway Universe do?
X: Right now Flyaway Universe is expanding. I started this company 4 years ago by myself and now have a solid team of around 20 people helping me to promote. We promote college parties, private parties, many different companies, and we proote and manage local artists. We also throw our own parties and we’re different because we choose DJ’s who can read people. That is why our parties are successful and why people come back, it’s all about he music and vibe. (chuckles) It’s funny because I actually started school as a biology major and now I live for marketing.
Q: How does your team profit mentally and physically from promoting?
X: Hmmm…. We profit mentally because at the end of the day we throw great parties that people seem to really enjoy. We really try not to focus on the money and try to keep the lines moving at a quick pace, but you have to understand that we do everything! We do the design, we book the DJ, we get people to print fliers and pay for them too. That is for the parties that we throw and that we get all of the profit after we pay for everything else. At the end of the day though, my job is something that I love and has made me grow mentally. I’ve learned so many things in the last 4 years, things that I had to teach myself, but I’m satisfied at the growth of my company