By michael burns and Ciaran Lambert/reporters
Students on NW Campus displayed their advertising repertoire reaching their inner Mad Men advertising guru Don Draper to give inspiration to local charities’ marketing campaigns.
Journalism instructor Sarah Angle led her class in a project to devise advertising campaigns for a local, nonprofit agency of their choice.
The students presented projects to their peers and representatives of the selected nonprofit agencies: Habitat for Humanity, The Women’s Center of Fort Worth, Tarrant Area Food Bank and Texas Girls’ Choir.
“They did an awesome, awesome job,” Angle said of her students.
Angle divided her students into four groups and gave them a month to gather information, develop realistic advertising tools and work with employees in each of their chosen agencies.
For creative stimulation, Angle showed her class clips of Mad Men episodes, a popular TV series that follows suave and smooth marketers of an advertising agency.
NW student Adria Weaver created a mock radio spot for her team’s company, Habitat for Humanity.
Weaver said Habitat for Humanity was excited to see student involvement in such a good cause, and she hopes her team’s marketing campaign inspires the organization to use their ideas.
Beyond building a thorough mock advertising campaign for Habitat for Humanity, Weaver and her team also developed a miniature fundraiser. They built a large cardboard house, and throughout the night, students dropped money into it. The money would go toward housing for those in need. Weaver said every dollar was like an actual building block.
“It’s like they’re building the house,” she said.
Susan Fine, director of public relations and communications at The Women’s Center, said she was impressed by the group representing her company. The center offers counseling, programs for illiteracy, rape victim recovery and an employment program for women, children and men.
“I’m going to look at these ideas,” she said.
She said she was impressed by the student-assembled Facebook page and the mock billboard that had a student-designed company logo: “40% of people in Fort Worth have difficulty reading this sign. Let’s end illiteracy.”
Works like this, along with commercials, radio spots, billboards, print ads and Facebook pages, were staples of all the projects.
Leann Ellis, vice president of teaching and learning services, was pleased with the campaigns and the students’ vision.
“Anything to get students out and to voice themselves is important,” Ellis said.
