“ARE YOU AWARE?” It’s the question that has been asked to thousands of Penn State students this week via chalk messages and flyers across campus, yet we are unsure how to answer with anything other than “of what?”.

I took a deeper look into this vowel-filled question and discovered a little-known registered student organization called the AAAAAAA, or Asian and African Americans  Advertising Awareness of Awareness Association. AAAAAAA has been behind the “ARE YOU AWARE?” campaign, one of the most successful on-campus viral marketing campaigns in recent memory, and has one simple goal: to raise awareness of awareness.

What is awareness of awareness? AAAAAAA’s President, who chose to remain anonymous for this piece, told me that it simply means constantly thinking about thinking about your surroundings or assignments or the task you’re doing right now. Seems pretty simple, right?

Let us take a lesson from AAAAAAA’s smash-hit campaign and continue to ask ourselves “ARE YOU AWARE?”. Otherwise, we might end up dropping a vowel and turning into B-Ware.

About the Author

John Tecce

John is a senior in the Smeal College of Business majoring in Marketing. He currently serves as the President of the Paternoville Coordination Committee and as a THON Chair for Nittany Nation. He tweets a lot.

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