Focus on students
Students think like Madison Avenue
The assignment: produce a radio spot and a print ad campaign that promote the Milwaukee County Parks System’s 100th anniversary through its golf, swimming and concert facilities. Students toiled all semester on their concepts, then made their pitches.
“Jackie Blaze’s billboard mock-up uses an offbeat dictionary definition to promote the Milwaukee County Parks System’s golf courses. “I love it,” says Sue Black, Parks director. She is the client, and Dr. Jean Grow’s intro-level copywriting class is the agency. Every semester, Grow, assistant professor of advertising, and her students pick a nonprofit. Then they get to work.
“My idea targets men 45 to 65 who golf,” explains Travers Wendle, senior advertising and theatre major, whose tagline is “400 Yards of Memories.”
Blaze, a junior advertising major, uses her offbeat definitions throughout the campaign she created. “I’m definitely more of a design person,” she says, “but this course showed me that I can write, too.”
| In the end, one radio spot and one print ad campaign — all concepted by students — wiill be choosen. |
The client stops at junior Jillian Mertz’s work, which includes a promotional item: a “tea-bag” holding a tree seedling that park visitors can plant. “Simplicity sells,” Mertz explains.
At the end of it all, Black has several concepts she could use to promote the park system’s golden anniversary. Grow’s classes donate their ideas to every nonprofit client. “I don’t have the money to hire an ad agency,” says Black. “I wish I could use all of these ideas.”
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