What is Rutgers Solar Car?
Rutgers Solar Car is a student organization and 501(c)(3) non-profit with the goal of designing, building, and racing solar powered vehicles. We compete on the national level in competitions such as the Formula Sun Grand Prix (track race) and American Solar Challenge (road race).
As marketing lead at Rutgers Solar Car it was/is my responsibility to manage all public facing aspects of the club from leading our rebrand to developing our social media to working with our 25+ corporate sponsors.
Rutgers Solar Car Rebrand
The Problem
Prior to the rebrand, Rutgers Solar Car was known as RU Solar.
The problem with this name was twofold:
On one hand, it was not clear to students or sponsors that we competed in solar racing competitions. This became a problem when we tried recruiting as many students believed we were promoting solar panels rather than building a car.
On the other hand, it was not clear to people outside Rutgers that we had any ties to Rutgers University as the abbreviation "RU" is only well known in New Jersey.
Additionally, our old logo, while it incorporated elements of what we do, did not include Rutgers, was not legible on light backgrounds, and blended in with most other solar car teams
The Solution
Over the winter of 2024 I led a rebrand, changing the name of the club from RU Solar to Rutgers Solar Car (abbreviated RSC), to make our purpose apparent in our name. I also developed a new logo, designed from the ground up to stand out from other solar car teams with a retro-inspired style.
Social Media
To effectively promote RSC, I created a story-driven content series called "Road to Driving Chassis". Each mini-episode of this series covered a different subteam such as suspension, electrical, or aerodynamics. Through the episodes, viewers were able to see our car come together in real time and eventually were able to see our car drive for the very first time!
This series garnered over 12,000 views on Instagram with the top performing video getting over 5,000 views.
Note: to see the true performance of this content please visit RSC's Instagram
Content Strategy
By focusing on creating a mix of story-driven content series and viral reels the marketing team was able to grow our instagram following by over 70% in the span of one year.
