Kaila White

The Republic | azcentral.com

It may be surprising for the uninitiated, but the extravagant recruitment video is not unusual.

In a new video, members of the Alpha Phi sorority at Arizona State University are shown flying in a helicopter, longboarding down a hill, riding in a hot-air balloon, off-roading on a Pink Jeep Tour, dancing and doing yoga poses on a mountain, posing in front of Old Main, driving in a convertible along University Drive in Tempe, releasing sky lanterns, stand-up paddleboarding in bikinis, cliff diving and doing aerial cartwheels and backflips.

But this one caught some drama earlier this month when Teen Vogue posted an article stating that the video was produced by Artec Media, which also created a viral video in January for the University of Miami chapter of the Delta Gamma sorority.

In January, Elle magazine "asked the creative director of a New York–based ad agency to crunch the numbers," and that person estimated that the drone, camera, boats, post production and such would have cost between $200,000 and $400,000. This one must have cost the same, Teen Vogue wrote.

"Technically, the point of a sorority is philanthropy, so that $200,000+ could have been donated to the Alpha Phi Foundation, which benefits cardiac research. Or, you know, could have paid for a few sisters' four-year tuition bills," the Teen Vogue author wrote.

The only problem? The video actually cost only a few thousand dollars to make, and the money came from hundreds of women's membership dues, according to Alpha Phi International Fraternity.

Alpha Phi International responds

Linda Kahangi, executive director of the Alpha Phi International Fraternity, sent The Republic a statement on the issue.

"While our Arizona State chapter appreciates the implied compliment on the quality of their video, I can assure you that it did not cost that much to produce. With today’s technology, a talented artistic team can produce a video like that for a few thousand dollars and that is what our chapter spent as well.

"The chapter’s marketing team, all college undergraduates, planned and produced the video using their own market research on what would appeal to incoming freshman women. This experience will provide them with valuable experience in their prospective post-graduate marketing careers, and they will be able to measure the success of their efforts in a real-world scenario.

"Our chapter at Arizona State has over 200 members at any given time, and their operations team manages a substantial operating budget based on member dues and they set aside savings each year to help defray the cost of longer term expenses. They were able to easily cover the cost of the video with those funds."

Recruitment videos: The music videos of normal teens

Videos like this flood the internet before sorority recruitment every year or even every semester. Every sorority in the world wants the best of the best to join, and one way to recruit is to create flashy videos that show an ideal sisterhood.

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Shot to look like high-quality music videos, the recruitment videos often feature dancing, traveling, boating, posing in trendy outfits and impeccable makeup.

This is likely thanks in big part to the popularity of the use of drones and GoPros, because any scene looks cool when shot from the sky or water, right? Not to mention the womens' marketing ability in pinpointing exactly what young women want their college lives to be like.

Study sessions, research, sports, volunteering and actual dorm rooms show up occasionally, like in this one from Alpha Delta Pi at University of Washington. It all depends on the culture of the sorority and the vision of the videographer.

(To get an idea, just look at Elite Daily's list of "The 10 Best Sorority Rush Videos Ever Created" or Total Sorority Move's list of "The 15 Best Sorority Recruitment Videos of 2015.")

All this drama sounds a lot like when ASU's Alpha Chi Omega sorority drew national attention last October when when Fox Sports Arizona commentators spent two minutes talking about them taking selfies during an Arizona Diamondbacks game.

Those women appeared on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" in a segment that ended with Shutterfly donating $10,000 to the sorority’s national philanthropy.