What is the biggest prize you’ve ever won from playing a game of rock-paper-scissors?
For one UNC student this past weekend, that’s tickets to see UNC and Duke men’s basketball play each other on February 3.
Hundreds of UNC students braved the cold weather on Friday evening to make it to the Indoor Practice Facility and try their hands at winning the “Dook It Out” rock-paper-scissors tournament. Whether it was from seeing the event on social media, noticing the food trucks outside, or hearing that tickets to the upcoming UNC and Duke men’s basketball game were on the line, students came in and played the classic game among themselves.
UNC students gather and sit in groups awaiting the opening rounds of the “Dook It Out” rock-paper-scissors tournament on January 19, 2024.
Organizers had the registered students break out into groups of 32 – 16 pairs of players for the initial rounds of the tournament. Before long, the facility was filled with people throwing down their three choices of rock paper or scissors and following it with fist pumps, cheers, or shouts of “so close!”
“Dook It Out” was the product of the ‘New Media Technologies’ class offered in the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media. Taught by advertising professor and founder of the rAVe agency Gary Kayye, the class runs in tandem with another of Kayye’s courses called ‘The Branding of Me.’ Each fall, his students come up with a project to create, organize, and market on their own as practical ways of learning. Then in the spring, they learn how to build upon those experiences with more branding strategies.
Kayye was there on Friday to support his students and watch the tournament unfold.
“We’re learning about social media marketing, digital media marketing, creating events, creating experiences…doing things that are outside of the normal, traditional advertising model,” he said. “The second semester is branding. From that, we learn, ‘Okay, now we’ve built an event, we’ve built something interesting. How do we make it long-lasting? How do we make it emotionally connect with people?’ So, the two classes together form a whole curriculum.”
“Dook It Out” highlighted some of those strategies through a variety of promotional campaigns. Social media videos with historical UNC basketball footage, rock-paper-scissors games shot in the Dean Smith Center, and event students holding up signs among fans at recent Carolina games were all part of the plan to get the word out. The class even involved UNC field hockey coach Erin Matson to help promote the event and featured videos with Carolina football’s Drake Maye and men’s basketball’s Paxson Wojcik.
Beyond offering the grand prize of the Carolina-Duke tickets – which student leaders said Kayye came through to secure – classmates went around to local Chapel Hill businesses to gather giveaway items and prizes for the runner-up, third place, and fourth place finishers.
Juliette Dias is a junior journalism major in the New Media Technologies class, and was voted by her peers to be a project manager for “Dook It Out.” She said while the class initially considered other types of events – like putting on a concert for the campus community – they kept coming back to the idea someone had thrown out during the brainstorming session.
“We wanted to make something that we would do ourselves,” said Dias. “I think someone in the class had said, ‘Hey, what if we did a rock-paper-scissors competition?’ And it was kinda like, ‘No we’re not doing that,’ and then [we said], ‘Oh wait, actually, we are doing that. We like that.’
“I think it ended up being fun for everybody [involved],” she said of Friday’s tournament, “and at the end of the day, that’s what we wanted to do.”
Once they had the idea in place, the students broke into a variety of groups to cover different responsibilities for putting “Dook It Out” together and spreading the word. There was a creative team, a production team, and a strategy team to go with communications, marketing and branding.
Kayye said he loved the idea when it was pitched and became filled out by the students – although it’s among some of the most unique. Other recent examples of projects include building a brand around Matson (when she was UNC athlete) turning an away football game into a watch party on campus, and even changing the name and slogan of UNC’s journalism school in 2015.
“They’re never the same,” Kayye said of the students’ work. “Sometimes they’re just for fun, like this one, and sometimes they’re more serious projects – like the rebrand of the school.”
On Friday, after the competition was whittled down, eight players were left standing from the group stage. They faced each other with a crowd now watching every move and waiting to see who would advance.
And then there were two. In the final round, which was best three out of five to help build suspense, UNC senior Ryan Burns ultimately came away with the win – by sweeping her opponent.
Ryan Burns faces off with her Final Four opponent in the “Dook It Out” tournament. Burns would win the match, and go on to win the entire contest.
Afterward, Burns said she hadn’t imagined she would end up winning the coveted tickets – and that she played on Friday without doing much rock-paper-scissors prep. Despite having some playing experience at a camp years ago, Burns said she cannot remember the last time she played the classic game before the “Dook It Out” tournament.
“One of my friends was doing research [beforehand],” she said, “and when I made it up, she was trying to tell me the [strategies]. I was like ‘Don’t tell me, I don’t want to think about it, I’ll just go.’ I did [play] paper every time for a while, and then that stopped working… so then I just did whatever came to my head.”
But the tickets will go to a worthy winner – not just because of Burns’ proficiency and luck, but because she has yet to experience a UNC-Duke men’s basketball game in person.
“I’ve never been and I didn’t have high hopes for the [student ticket] lottery,” the senior said with a laugh. “I don’t know [who I’m going to take with me], I’ll have to see who wins the lottery and then that’ll help. Because I have five roommates and a boyfriend…so it’s tough.”
As people filed away carrying consolation prizes and giveaway gift cards, Tu – who is also a junior advertising major – smiled and deemed the class’ event a success. He said the biggest learning curve was the size of the team he oversaw to put on the tournament.
“I think it was just communication and coordination,” Tu said of his personal takeaways from the event. “Getting 50 people to work together and that kind of thing – keeping track of deadlines and making sure we’re not missing anything. Some things came together last minute, other things we had ready months ago. [It was] keeping everything on a tight ship and just getting it done.”
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