Harvard MBA Oath - How to persuade someone to care?

MBA Oath

The oath is a voluntary pledge for graduating MBAs and current MBAs to “create value responsibly and ethically.” Our mission is to facilitate a widespread movement of MBAs who aim to lead in the interests of the greater good and who have committed to living out the principles articulated in the oath.

We started as a group of Class of 2009 Graduates of Harvard Business School, but the history of the Oath does not begin there. From the Hippocratic Oath to Thunderbird’s Oath of Honor and the Columbia Business School’s Honor Code, professionals, students, and academics have evoked kindred aspirations. We are building upon these essential efforts to create a community of MBAs with a high standard for ethical and professional behavior.

We are now a broad coalition of MBA students, graduates and advisors, representing over 250 schools from around the world. We are partnering with the Aspen Institute and the World Economic Forum. We want our degree to mean something more than it currently does. This oath is our way of laying out the principles of what we think an MBA ought to stand for.

We hope the Oath will: a) make a difference in the lives of MBAs who take the oath b) challenge other MBAs to work with a higher professional standard, whether they sign the oath or not and c) create a public conversation in the press about professionalizing and improving management.

Harvard 2nd year MBAs (class of 2010) who are 2 months away from graduating and going back to their professional careers. This audience is constantly bombarded with information and events and very hard to be persuaded to spend 10 minutes on someone. The one common place we are planning to market our campaign is in the classrooms where each of the MBAs shows up 1-5 times a week.

We are planning a 2 week campaign titled "My Oath". This campaign will canvas the campus and classrooms in 2 stages with two aims: 90% of the people should be motivated to go to the mbaoath.com website and read the oath; more than 50% of the class of 2010 (900 students) should sign it.

We like blues and whites but are very open for any creative, pro-looking ideas, this should NOT be a Harvard/Crimson design since we want to use it later in other schools as well.

Detailed requirements:

1.*teaser poster* (A3 size) with XXX (name of a classmate) have signed it, will you?
e.g.: "Whitney Petersmeyer has signed it, will you?"

2. *Campaign poster classroom* (A3 size) - same color scheme as teaser, and a follow up excerpt from the actual Oath "MyOath - XXXXXX"

e.g. 1 "My Oath - I will act with utmost integrity and pursue my work in an ethical manner"
e.g. 2 "My Oath - I will understand and uphold, both in letter and in spirit, the laws and contracts governing my own conduct and that of my enterprise."

3. *campaign poster hallway* - full, short version of the oath with "MyOath" title (attached)