Huntingdon College has a number of things that can at­tract potential students -- being listed among U.S. News and World Report's "America's Best Colleges" and the Princeton Re­view's "The Best Colleges, Re­gion By Region," as well as be­ing listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

However, the squirrels on campus could end up being one of the school's best recruiting tools.

The squirrels are the theme for Huntingdon's latest recruit­ing effort, a viral marketing campaign through a Web site they started called www.kami­kazesquirrels.com.

It's a one-page Web site that links to a page on Face­book.com, a popular social net­working site similar to My-
Space.com.

The Facebook page features profiles managed by several Huntingdon students who have taken on the persona of squir­rels with names like Harry Nut­men and Nelson Nutson. They use the squirrels to show poten­tial students the benefits of Huntingdon.

"We basically trick them into learning more about Hunting­don," said David Allred of LWT Communications, a local mar­keting firm behind the cam­paign.

Allred is a Huntingdon alum­nus.

When coming up with the idea, Allred said that he wanted a marketing tool that would have staying power for Hunting­don.

"I thought they needed some­thing to evolve over time and take on its own identity," he said. "It's unconventional, but the audience they're trying to attract isn't going to be reached by the typical media."

Allred said kids graduating high school are more likely to be drawn into something online than advertisements on televi­sion, in newspapers or on radio.

To reach that age group, he said there was no better place than Facebook.

When it came to Huntingdon, nothing was more representa­tive of the school than the squir­rels on campus.

"Everyone on campus knows about the squirrels," said Su Ofe, associate vice president for communications and market­ing at Huntingdon. "They throw nuts, run down the tree at you and some students even joke that they work with campus se­curity to catch students doing things they shouldn't."

While that might not be true, the squirrels on Huntingdon's Facebook page each take on a personality created by the stu­dents they represent, and the goal is to tell people about Hunt­ingdon.

"One example is you check out the site and you wonder how a bunch of squirrels could have a Web site," Allred said. "That's when you show that every stu­dent at Huntingdon gets a laptop computer as part of their tui­tion."

Another example that Allred pointed out is that the site has pictures of the squirrels (they had stuffed animal squirrels wearing Huntingdon shirts made for the site) at different lo­cations across the globe to tell people about the weeklong trip abroad that every Huntingdon student gets.

"Before you know it, you have these high school students in­terested and they're sending out invites to their friends to check out the site, and they're inter­ested, too," he said.

Allred said another good thing about the Web site is that it has energized Huntingdon students.

"They've really gotten fired up about it," he said. "When we started working on the plush squirrels, they were really ex­cited to get them in so they could put photos up on the site."

Cliff Groce, a senior at Hunt­ingdon, is one of the students who serves as one of the squir­rels on the site (he won't say which since it's a secret). He in­terned at LWT and helped set up and manage the Facebook page.

"I think the campaign was a good idea because it was some­thing different," he said. "The point of a viral marketing cam­paign is to grab your attention with something different."

Groce said it also was impor­tant to involve the students.

"If anyone is going to know what's going to attract potential students here, it's us," he said. "It's just good to help the college and help it move forward."