GREEK-ing Out
Event: The Rock Boat XVIII
Fan Engagement | Creative Strategy | Community Building
For the 18th year of The Rock Boat, we leaned into a college theme. Eighteen is the age most students head off to school, after all. For some extra guest engagement, I created custom "fraternities" for guests to join at TRBU (The Rock Boat University)!
I spent far too long staring at Greek letters and real fraternity names, trying to force something clever... until it hit me: Why not make up my own letters? It would be much more fun and more meaningful to this crowd.
So I picked five beloved Rock Boat traditions and built custom "houses" around them. All of them tapped into the idiosyncrasies of the community:
soft-serve ice cream
high fives
the love of pizza
new music discovery
the game of flip cup
From there, I sketched custom Greek(ish) letterforms inspired by each one. Just like that, our TRBU Frats were born. Silly, specific, and totally on-brand.
Making The Letters Make Sense
There's a Flip Cup tournament at the event every year, so this plays into one of the "official games". This fraternity embodied the party element of the crowd.
I love that the first letter shows the filled cup each player starts with, and the last letter shows the final 'winning' position of the cup.
Flippa Kappa Cuppa
Discovering new music is one of the most exiting parts of this event. Guests come for their favorites, but leave with brand new artists to dig into. It was a perfect element to play up here.
This fraternity is more of a play on words where Nu Mu Sigma sounds like "New Music".
Nu Mu Sigma
Grab-and-go food options are extremely popular for any guest on board since they're bouncing from show to show. That makes pizza a Rock Boat staple!
By working with the letter "pi", all that was left to do was to add a pizza!
Pizza Pi
It's tradition! Every person that boards The Rock Boat is greeted with welcome high five. That's the sign vacation has officially begun!
It was fun to play with the letter shape of the Greek "phi" and work the number 5 into it here. This one was tough to figure out but it ended up perfect.
Hi Phive
The Rock Boat crowd is well-known for hitting up the soft-serve machine between shows.
The Greek letter for "omega" is just BEGGING to become a scoop of ice cream! Plus the fact "delta" is perfect for a cone - this may be my favorite of the bunch.
Omega Cone Melta
From Doodles to Boarding Day
Time to give these frats some personality! We created a backstory and identity for each one, then invited guests to take an online quiz to find out which TRBU house they belonged to.
Once they got their results, they could snag their official fraternity shirt in our online merch store to rep their crew on boarding day.
Flippa Kappa Cuppa
You’re here to chew gum and win the party but you’re all out of gum. With feet firmly planted on firm ground you’re a mild mannered {insert real grown-up job here} but on the boat and at the beach you become everyone’s favorite party animal. “The next round’s on me” sometimes means you were feeling generous with your key card, sometimes it’s literal but you’re always having a good time. The best band on the ship is whoever is game enough to let you accompany them on the beer bucket bongos and the best flip cup team is whoever is smart enough to make you their anchor. You are winning at life one cup at a time.
Nu Mu Sigma
Well la-di-dah! Look at you, every band that’s ever made it big? You called it. “Oh, are they playing Stardust Theater this year? Yawn, it won’t be like that time I saw them in that smaller-than-bar-city venue with 4 other people in this tiny town just outside of my tiny town. You’re always on the cutting edge. To your credit, your guesses about each year’s line-up are so eerily close that we’re pretty sure you have cameras in the Sixthman office. While the rest of the ship flocks to the names they know you walk in the other direction to catch the “next greatest thing,” and it usually pays off.
Pizza Pi
You march to the beat of your own cheese-covered drum and that’s okay. You may not be able to find your cabin, but you’ve found your tribe. More often than not you don’t even decide to go The Rock Boat until a few weeks before sailing. No worries, someone will always add you their room because you don’t require much maintenance as long as they remind you which city to show up in. When you can find your schedule you pick out the shows you want to see but can never remember which way is “forward” and which way is “aft” so you always discover new music. Your friends are constantly amazed that you can’t find the pool deck but seem to have a homing device leading you to know when and when and where pizza is served.
Hi Phive
You’re so excited and you just CAN’T hide it. Seriously, it is physically impossible for you to cloak your emotions. You are world’s worst poker player and the universe’s best hype (wo)man. Rolling suitcases pull you back, you only move forward. That’s why you throw your bag on your back and DANCE onto that ship like it is your job. Sixthman Jen looks forward to gangway hi-fives from YOU. Much like the train to Hogwarts your everyday enthusiasm meter is parked at 9 ¾, but it breaks the glass and stays at 11 on The Rock Boat. You start planning your schedule but once you realize you have circled EVERYTHING all plans go out the window. Instead, you chug a Red Bull and dart from show to show so fast that your fellow cruisers will swear you’ve been cloned.
Omega Cone Melta
More likely than not, this isn’t your first boat. You know what you like and you like what you know . . . and that’s OKAY! Even if you are new, no one will ever know because you will wear Rock Boat like a well fitting speedo. Or is that an oxymoron? You just have that look that says, “Come with me new friend, I know where the good coffee machine is.” Others may laugh at your anxiety over the idea of TRB without soft serve, but some things are sacred. You spend weeks analyzing the schedule and creating your online schedule to share with your friends. Exactly how many drinks must you imbibe to make your drink package worth it? You have a spreadsheet for that. Maybe you’ve been kicked out of more than one shore side fro-yo shop while practicing that perfect swirl. The drools of jealousy your magnificent cone garners on the boat make it ALL worth it.
Let The Hype Begin
The guest response was instant and hilarious. Guests jumped into the quiz to discover their official TRBU house, proudly shared their results across socials, and started building camaraderie with their fellow frat brothers and sisters before they ever left home.
One of the artists even created a bonus "FRO-ternity" of their own, which we welcomed with open arms. Seeing guests show up on boarding day repping their colors in full frat-tee glory? A true highlight, and one of the best ice-breakers we've had.
The whole campaign made TRBU feel real, playful and tangible the moment guests stepped on the ship.
