Fat Squirrel Week: “A-corny” Instagram Campaign Success Story 

Having fun while leveraging Instagram’s tools for increased engagement.

in Campaigns

A 17-grid bracket graphic with photos of squirrels in each of the 17 spots. There is a crown on the center and winner spot of the graphic. Text: "Warner College of Natural Resources Colorado State University, Fat Squirrel Week, Oct. 2-8, 2024, QR code, check out our Instagram Stories and cast your vote for your favorite fat squirrel!

Guest author is Monica McQuail, Digital Media and Communications Manager at CSU’s Warner College of Natural Resources. 

In October 2024, Warner College of Natural Resources introduced its first-ever “Fat Squirrel Week,” an Instagram campaign that combined fun, student engagement, democracy, and a little bit of education.

As with any campaign launch, those of us behind this effort – which included myself and my team of three student ambassadors: Carmen Guerrero, Connor McHugh, and Kay Rampelt – had no idea how it would be received. We hit “post” with trepidation, and we ended the week-long campaign with some of the highest-performing posts and stories we’ve ever had in our social media history.  

Drawing inspiration from “Fat Bear Week,” our campaign debuted on Warner College’s Instagram with eight squirrels battling it out in three rounds of bracket-style voting, before the Fattest Squirrel was crowned. Unlike this year’s Fat Bear Week, we did not have to delay the start of our campaign due to one contestant cannibalizing another. 

Introduced in 2014 by Katmai National Park and Preserve and organized by the National Park Service, Fat Bear Week is a week in October that commemorates the Alaska Peninsula brown bear as individuals pack on the pounds for winter hibernation. It has become an internet sensation, with people voting for their favorite 1,000-pound bears and NPR and CNN reporting on the drama and outcome. 

Representing a natural resources college on socials, I often draw inspiration from the National Park Service and other National Preserve accounts, so as I planned Warner College’s 2024 social media calendar at the start of the year, their posts were top of mind.  

Around this time, my team of ambassadors created “Squirrel Sunday,” an Instagram stories series that asked our followers to send us squirrel photos in exchange for Squirrel Sunday stickers. We did the math: Fat Bear Week + squirrel photos = Fat Squirrel Week. 

Screenshot of an Instagram Story explaining "Squirrel Sundays".

Squirrel Sunday Instagram Story

Instagram Story featuring a squirrel on top of a bike handle. The text on screen reads "Sundays are for squirrels".

The ultimate guide to Fat Squirrel Week

Our goals: 

  • Have some fun! 
  • Increase engagement with our current followers. 
  • Appreciate some beloved, charismatic CSU wildlife to which students feel a special connection. 
  • Educate our audience about campus squirrels and how to safely interact with them. 
  • And maybe create an annual Warner tradition that students helped build. 

Our creative assets:  

  • 100s of squirrel photos: Collected in our DMs from our followers over months and sorted through by my team to find the fattest squirrels. 
  • 100 squirrel stickers: For anyone who voted in our bracket. 
  • 12 stories: Multiple squirrel face-offs using the poll sticker for our voting mechanism. 
  • 2 awards/prizes: Warner thermos and flannel for the final squirrel photographers. 
  • 1 Fat Squirrel bracket: Updated after each round of polling and broken into digital and physical versions: TV screens, 24”x36” poster, Instagram post. 
  • 1 SOURCE article: Featuring expertise on squirrel livelihood from Warner faculty, a summary of Fat Squirrel Week, and lots of messaging around not feeding the squirrels. 

Soup to nuts: What we learned

We leaned heavily into the silliness of this campaign, creating posts that featured an overload of nutty puns, funny bios, squirrel interviews caught on camera, and lots of memes. Squirrels took over my team’s lives, as we reacted quickly to the surprising engagement we received, eliminating anything that wasn’t squirrel-related from our social calendar and creating content at the last minute to continue building on the momentum of this campaign. 

Collaborating with a well-known CSU squirrel account (@csusquirrel_) and crediting squirrel photographers by tagging their accounts were key to this event, as we found that those photographers then had a vested interest in the outcome, sharing our posts and urging their followers to vote for “their” squirrel. 

An image of a squirrel eating a nut. Text on the screen reads "My name in high school was the Girthy Gatherer. The only thing bigger than my cheeks is my love for peanuts. Fitness goal: Fit this entire walnut in my mouth."

 

It was an unplanned bonus that we launched this campaign a month before our national election and during CSU’s Year of Democracy, so students got to practice voting and earn stickers before the November elections. 

Thanks to leveraging Instagram direct messaging, the poll sticker in stories, collaborating, and tagging, our best post reached nearly 15,000 accounts, received over 950 likes, and 250+ shares; our stories brought in an average of 450 votes for each face-off; and we gained nearly 50 new followers at the end of the campaign. 

Graphic announcing the winner of the Fat Squirrel Week.

This campaign reiterated one of the main strategies I’ve employed with Warner’s Instagram account: Don’t take things too seriously. Our primary audience is comprised of students who spend their days cramming their brains with complex subjects, studying, and overthinking. For them, Instagram is a place where they can de-stress and enjoy mindless entertainment, so we (and the CSU squirrels) are happy to provide that for them. 

So, as you plan your social calendars for the upcoming year and want to boost engagement among your audience, consider your own bracket or competition that students can get directly involved in – and don’t forget to have some fun along the way!