Buffalo Advertising: A Force to Be Reckoned With!
Once upon a time, I was a happy little undergraduate speech communication major that was perfectly content analyzing theories, pounding out the differences between quantitative and qualitative research methods, and writing 20 page papers to present at scholarly conferences. UNTIL, I decided to pursue an academic minor in mass communication. Enter: my first advertising and public relations classes. Little did I know, I would quickly fall in love not only with this multifaceted field, but also the people in it.
My senior year at West Texas A&M university, I had the honor of taking the capstone advertising campaigns class and we designed a campaign that aimed to reduce teen binge drinking for our client, The Century Council. In May 2009, our class traveled to Houston, TX to compete in the District 10 National Student Advertising Competition sponsored by The American Advertising Federation. This competition was special and highly memorable, not only because I was lucky enough to serve as one of the five presenters, but also because WT took home fifth place out of nearly 20 schools (this was leaps and bounds higher than WT had EVER placed), and we beat out several tier one universities such as University of Texas, Texas Christian University, and Oklahoma State University. Later that year, our campaign won a GOLD ADDY Award from The American Advertising Federation, which was a HUGE honor!
Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend the 2010 National Student Advertising Competition in Amarillo, TX. Buffalo Advertising was re-united and it was quite the amazing reunion! This year's ad campaigns class ROCKED the competition and came less than a tenth of a point away from WINNING the entire competition! Second place is still amazing. Buffalo Advertising is moving up! Go Buffs!
That class, and THOSE people help define who I am today. They helped me realize where my talents lie, and what I want to do with my life.
I hope the undergraduates at CSU are getting the chance to do things like this. I know CSU doesn't have much of an advertising program, but they do have a stellar PR program, so I'm sure students are getting amazing hands on experience with real clients for PR campaigns.
This is my recommendation to the CSU Journalism and Technical Communication Department: Since PR is ever-changing and becoming more integrated marketing communication anyway, I think CSU should add more advertising classes to the curriculum and participate in competitions offered by The American Advertising Federation. I know CSU does a lot with PRSSA, but participating in AAF's contests were my FAVORITE memories from undergrad, so the department should think about it! Our program should be competing against Boulder anyway, instead of letting them (CU) be known as "the advertising school" while we (CSU) are "the PR school." Let's mix and match!
This mini documentary shows just a LITTLE bit of the adventure that transformed my ad campaigns class into family last year :) I love them SO much! I know the others agree with me; this was one of the best weekends of our lives!
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About Me
- Jill, not Jillian.
- Graduate student. Studying public communication and technology with an emphasis in public relations. Publicist for Disney. New media guru.
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