Dionte Berry
Features Editor
[email protected]
After nearly two semesters of work and preparation, the Ads Club competed in the annual National Student Advertising Competition sponsored by the American Advertising Federation.
Each year, competing schools are given a client to make an advertising campaign for and then given a list of criteria and a budget to go by. The campaign serves to expand the brand of their client and bring in new customers.
This year, the team was led by senior advertising major Matthew Anderson who is president and project manager of Ads Club.
The Ads Club competed as part of District 5, which consisted of schools in the Western Kentucky region, in phase one of the competition.
“We are in District 5 and I believe there are five or six schools in our district and since these are the district finals, the winner in the district goes against the winners of other districts for a final competition,” Anderson said.
This was Anderson’s third campaign with Ads Club, so he was seasoned on what needed to be done even in a virtual setting with COVID-19. For this campaign, the club represented Tinder.
“We were given the pretty hefty budget of $10 million dollars and they told us to basically grow Tinder’s brand,” Anderson. “Obviously that was a very broad term, but the Ads Club and I went in to play and created a great campaign.”
Anderson and the rest of the club had the wisdom and experience of Senior Advertising Instructor Gill Welsch on their side as they worked on the campaign.
“Welsch moderates everything that we are doing throughout the campaign and he gives us some insight on what we are doing,” Anderson said. “He has a lot of industry knowledge and he has been at Murray State for quite a few years, so he is familiar with ads club and the student advertising competition.”
Anderson’s first campaign was for the fast food restaurant Wiener Schnitzel and his second campaign was for Adobe, but by that time COVID-19 had shut campus down.
However, they were still able to compete and present their campaign over Zoom and this year was the same, except when the club started preparing, they did some adjusting.
“Only one member and myself were familiar with competing on Zoom because we did it last year for Adobe,” We had to introduce them to the virtual environment, and luckily they adapted to it well.”
After presenting the topic to the judges, Anderson was excited to see how the judges would receive it.
The Ads Club presented their campaign and sent it to the judges of the competition on Thursday, April 15 and then on Saturday, April 18 they had a question and answer session with judges and afterwards they were told their placements.
“Whenever I sent in the pitch and everything I got goosebumps. It was something we have been working hard on since the end of August and we’ve done an exceptional job with it,” Anderson said.
Along with his excitement, Anderson expressed his thankfulness towards his team and said that without them the campaign would not be what it is.
Another member leading the campaign was junior advertising major and Vice President of Ads Club Julia Cwiklowski. Similar to Anderson, this is Cwiklowski’s third campaign.
Cwiklowski has found her experiences in Ads Club useful for getting experience in the creative process of campaign production.
“I love the creative process of putting a campaign together,” Cwiklowski said. “As a team, we brainstorm strategies and tactics to solve problems for our clients and it’s great bouncing off everyone’s ideas and forming a thorough plan for our clients to improve their business.”
Cwiklowski found herself more acquainted with presenting and competing on Zoom. Cwiklowski said she didn’t mind presenting from the comfort of her home.
With the rest of their team, Cwiklowski and Anderson was eager to get feedback from the judges, but upon feedback they found they would not be moving onto the next round. Although they did not place, they were happy to have another year of getting experience.
“I think I can speak for our entire team when I say we were proud of the campaign we put together,” Cwiklowski said. “Each member put their best effort into their part of the project and made the best out of each work session we had together.”
Anderson also finds that the central point of Ads Club is to get real world experience that will be rewarding for members as they pursue post-graduation plans.
“Even though we did not win or place, that’s completely fine with me. What matters to me is that all those on the team are getting professional experience that they would use in the real world,” Anderson said.