Pink will be seen more around Campustown this spring.

The ISU and Ames Police Departments are teaming up for a spring campaign to improve relations between the departments and students.

For the campaign they are using Frank the Flamingo. ISU Police Sgt. Liz Gries said the flamingo was chosen because of focus group responses.

“We did a lot of focus groups and found out what would work and what wouldn’t work and everyone told us something silly or something unexpected,” she said.

Gries said they wanted to use some sort of bird because of Iowa State’s swans and Cy.

“We initially were going to go with swans, but we wanted our own identity,” she said.

Gries said the campaign is meant to promote law enforcement as a positive group.

The departments haven’t worked together on a formal campaign like this before, and neither have had a spring campaign before, Gries said.

“We’ve found that students have problem differentiating between Ames Police and ISU Police, and this way we’re sending out the same message,” she said.

Ames Police Cmdr. Randy Kessel said it is important for the departments to work together.

“Basically, we are dealing with the same customer group, the student body and Veishea celebration,” he said. “We want to make an impact on the off-campus areas.”

Matthew Steffes, junior in marketing, said the campaign is smart.

“I think having better communication with the law enforcement and the Iowa State community will help prevent a reoccurrence of the riots of 2004,” he said.

Based on statistics, the target audience for the campaign is college males, ages 20 to 23, Gries said.

“Those people are the ones out there having a good time, and like to be the life of the party,” she said. “That’s why we went with the pink and flamingo because that’s the group we’re trying to cater to.”

Steffes said the campaign will be effective.

“I think it will help raise awareness, because when people see those shirts for the first time, they’ll ask about them,” he said.

Both departments will be promoting the campaign throughout campus and Campustown. The party response team will be doing the promoting for Ames Police, Kessel said.

They will be giving away merchandise including pink T-shirts, flamingo key chains, flamingo head boppers and pink leis, Gries said. If students want some of the merchandise, they just have look for the bright yellow vehicle that has been named “the flamingo-mobile.”

Steffes wasn’t sure about some of the merchandise.

“The T-shirts are clever, but I think they may have wasted their money on some of the other items,” he said.

The back of the T-shirt says, “The cops just gave me the bird!”

Past campaigns in the fall have included “I Wore the Bracelet” and “It Just got Harder to Love,” which included T-shirts that said, “I Love ISU Police.”

“It’s the same format, but it’s the first time we’ve addressed spring partying,” Gries said.