"What's your Scandal?"

A few sleuths figuring out the mystery!

Recently, my PR team: Bailey Abercrombie, Yasmiene Davis and Claire Dykes worked on a campaign with the CW network to help increase viewership for two of their prime time shows, Melrose Place and 90210.

Our group decided to tie the two shows together and figure out a way to make our party keep these shows on their minds at all times. We finally realized that all soap opera characters have one thing in common -- scandal. We thought it would be fun to have a murder mystery dinner party. The decision to tie in the characters from the two shows was an added treat, and kept our guests wondering how they portrayed an actual character. With that the murder mystery party, appropriately titled "What's your Scandal?" was born.

To help promote our event we created a Facebook group, great flyers, and submitted press releases. We also held a tie-dye event on the campus with different dyes representing different scandals. I think this event greatly enhanced our guest turnout, and it was fun for all.

As the guests arrived they were handed a confidential envelope containing the information about the evening, their character they were to portray, and a sleuth's notebook and pen. After each course was served, a new set of suspects and clues were given. The event took place in an intimate location with low lighting and candles and Frank Sinatra playing in the background. Our ambience was very well created. By the end of the evening I was amazed at just how invested our guests were in finding out "Who dun it?"

We asked our guests at the end of the evening to write down who they thought committed the murder and why. The winner was awarded a gift card and several other prizes were awarded to people we thought really stood out. About 45 people showed up to our event. I was very pleased with the turnout.

If a survey isn't a measure of success, a sure sign of one is your guests coming out of their way to tell you how much fun they had. A week after our event, people I didn't know prior to the event were still telling me how much fun they had. Several people were even asking when the next one was. Our surveys hinted people were actually interested in finding out how they portrayed their character versus the actual television counterpart.

I am very pleased with my PR team. I think we did very well both in working together cohesively, and in our execution.