Adthing: a student experience

The University of Utah is known for their experiential learning experiences for students. The Dean of the David Eccles School of Business (Dean Randall), wanted to further this concept in his own programs, specifically in the marketing discipline. The idea and focus is to create a student advertising agency to serve as a training ground for students with interest in the advertising industry. With this focus in mind, research was conducted on other successful university's programs. However, the standout program, VCU's Brandcenter, was used as the model for the new program. The agency, ADTHING, was launched in September of 2016 and is currently still a thriving program, with 25 students currently a part of the program. ADTHING has served over 15 clients by providing everything from billboard campaigns, rebranding, brand identity, TV spots, radio exposure, brand films, as well as social media campaigns. Students have received one on one mentorship from the executive director Bill Oakley, and have had industry exposure by attending industry wide conferences around the nation. While ADTHING has developed and is quickly becoming more efficient and beneficial for the students, there are still areas for improvement. Changing some of the job titles and focuses will help eliminate some internal confusion, moving forward. Continuing to focus on mentorship and building stronger ties with the advisory board is key to progress and a greater learning experience for the students. In addition to both of these concepts, maintaining consistent industry exposure are all significant to the improvement of the program as a whole and increasing the significance of this experience for students.

ADTHING: A STUDENT EXPERIENCE by Victoria Brown A Senior Honors Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The University of Utah In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Honors Degree in Bachelor of Science In Marketing Approved: ______________________________ William Oakley Thesis Faculty Supervisor _____________________________ Stephen Carson Chair, Department of Marketing _______________________________ Ian Skurnik Honors Faculty Advisor _____________________________ Sylvia D. Torti, PhD Dean, Honors College April 2018 Copyright © 2018 All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT The University of Utah is known for their experiential learning experiences for students. The Dean of the David Eccles School of Business (Dean Randall), wanted to further this concept in his own programs, specifically in the marketing discipline. The idea and focus is to create a student advertising agency to serve as a training ground for students with interest in the advertising industry. With this focus in mind, research was conducted on other successful university’s programs. However, the standout program, VCU’s Brandcenter, was used as the model for the new program. The agency, ADTHING, was launched in September of 2016 and is currently still a thriving program, with 25 students currently a part of the program. ADTHING has served over 15 clients by providing everything from billboard campaigns, rebranding, brand identity, TV spots, radio exposure, brand films, as well as social media campaigns. Students have received one on one mentorship from the executive director Bill Oakley, and have had industry exposure by attending industry wide conferences around the nation. While ADTHING has developed and is quickly becoming more efficient and beneficial for the students, there are still areas for improvement. Changing some of the job titles and focuses will help eliminate some internal confusion, moving forward. Continuing to focus on mentorship and building stronger ties with the advisory board is key to progress and a greater learning experience for the students. In addition to both of these concepts, maintaining consistent industry exposure are all significant to the improvement of the program as a whole and increasing the significance of this experience for students. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ii INTRODUCTION 1 INITIAL RESEARCH – FOUNDATION OF ADTHING 2 ADTHING’s CURRENT STATE 9 IMPROVEMENTS FOR THE FUTURE 12 EXHIBITS 15 REFERENCES 23 iii 1 INTRODUCTION After accepting a job as an intern for the Dean of the David Eccles School of Business (Dean Randall), we began designing and developing an experiential learning experience for students that are interested in advertising. The program that eventually came out of these efforts is called ADTHING. ADTHING is a student staffed ad agency on campus, with a focus on providing students with real, applicable advertising industry experience and mentorship. ADTHING is the agency that is staffed by students and run by pros. My involvement in this program has been extensive and I worked as the account director for the agency. I was the first student employee for the program. In the last 2 years, I have been able to see the growth and development of ADTHING before we even knew what we were going to call the program. I have been fortunate enough to see the development of this program in its entirety and that is the basis of this thesis. I hope that this thesis will serve and help the program in the future. 2 Initial Research – Foundation of ADTHING The University of Utah takes pride in experiential learning opportunities. It is part of the reason why the entrepreneurship program is one of the best in the nation. The David Eccles School of Business takes great pride in their ever-growing rankings. While entrepreneurship, finance, and accounting are the star programs within the Eccles School of Business. Where do the other disciplines stand? After my Freshman year of college, yearning to do more and with a keen fascination in marketing – knowing that is what I wanted to major in – I applied to be an intern for the Dean of the Business School, Taylor Randall. My first meeting consisted of what my current experience had been at the school itself and within the Business Scholars program. I was painfully aware, of the lack of differentiating factors that the marketing major had and as I was talking to Dean Randall about my passion and interest in the marketing field, particularly advertising, he challenged me. He challenged me to research different programs around the country to see if something similar would work at our own university. It turns out that Dean Randall had been wanting to start an experiential learning program for the marketing discipline for a while, and I was able to help facilitate and push this concept forward. Marketing as a field is rather broad. The term marketing could include any of the following: marketing research, analytics, design, advertising, marketing management, social media marketing, promotional events, and strategy. With such a broad scope of work, the topic needed to be more focused for a better final product and for the research to be more applicable. With an acute interest in advertising and upon more research of programs and resources at the University of Utah, there were few 3 resources to be found. The only item that narrowed in on advertising specifically, was listed in the description of the strategic communications degree. However, this degree also included a public relations focus among other topics. The next program or student experience that had an advertising type of a focus was the marketing degree that the David Eccles School of Business offered, but once again the marketing major was a loose connection to advertising as a whole. Upon further research, classes were offered covering aspects of digital marketing in the communications department and the business school offered classes with “marketing” in the title that were supposed to cover parts of the advertising discipline. With little specialization in the advertising industry and knowing other universities specialized in such a discipline, it became a clear choice for an experiential learning program. Advertising is an intriguing and an allusive industry that many times universities do not offer a degree in. This provides a need or an opportunity for the university to offer a program to further educate students in advertising, given that there is a lack of knowledge and mentorship in this area as it stands. Dean Randall was aware of this opportunity and with his focus on a student advertising experience, I focused my research and efforts on a program to further educate students in advertising. With advertising as my main focus, I researched different programs around the country and worked to determine if a program that is successful at another university would be a good addition to the University of Utah. The main purpose of this program is to give students the opportunity to gain professional experience in the industry, so they are able to get those competitive internships and jobs within the 4 industry. Seeing what other universities did to accomplish the same goal provided many insights. Initial research led me to a variety of different programs within undergraduate programs at universities and one master’s program. I began my research in the Fall of 2015. I began with programs connected with universities specifically. The following universities listed that they had an advertising agency for students: Brigham Young University, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and most notably Boston University. Boston University had the most distinguished program out of all of them at the time initial research was performed in September of 2015 (BU AdLab, 2015). Each of these programs out of each of these universities had a very similar layout. Each program included about 20 to 25 students that were typically upperclassmen (juniors and seniors) (BU AdLab 2015). There was only one exception to this particular characteristic. BYU’s program had about the same 20- 25 students consistently on staff but had about 200 students involved in the program as a whole (BYU Adlab, 2015). While the others relied almost entirely on their staff of about 25 students, BYU’s program allowed students to work on a project by project basis, which allowed for more students to be involved in the program and get that applicable industry experience (BYU AdLab, 2015). Another key characteristic that was used in each of these programs was each of them had two faculty advisors. These faculty advisors had worked in the industry and could be considered industry experts. Their primary role was guide the students through a typical agency process. This includes creating material for a client, presenting to the client, and providing final assets to the client that hopefully, will 5 achieve the objectives the client had specified. Each program had their own website and blog showcasing their students and the work they had produced. The most notable clients for each of these universities varied from AT&T, the U.S. Coast Guard, Gatorade, and Nike ID. While those are some impressive names, each program was rather vague with details as far as whether or not the work that these students may have produced for Gatorade or AT&T actually hit the market and was used for its intended purpose, or did it end up sitting in the company’s email being shelved as a “good idea they might use one day” or maybe the whole project was a way to appease the young students interested in the advertising world and while their work was decent there was no way it would hit market. It was unclear if this work for these notable companies actually launched and was placed in market. Essentially this is the definition of spec work. Spec work is work that is created on the off chance a company like Nike would hire a bunch of students to do a campaign for them. This work is typically a nice way of showing off talent or skills in the hope that maybe, the company that this involves would be so impressed they might actually use it. While each program touted a well-known company as one of their clients, each program also had many clients that were startup companies. However, it was never noted how sales or any other objective was met using these ads. All in all, these programs lacked substantial supporting data for their work. However, being a university program each one explained that their students received great insights on the advertising industry itself, which includes insight into television, magazine, social media, and online advertising. Each program needed to show some credibility, but ultimately, these programs served as a training ground for students that were 6 interested in the advertising industry. These programs were meant to be a supplement to a students’ educations. Real life experience cannot be taught in the classroom and each of these programs were designed to give students the real experience, without a textbook. These programs are considered a part of each of the respective universities, so they needed to be associated with a specific department. The common theme in the sample group of programs that were studied was each of these programs were associated with one discipline, and one discipline only. Each of these programs were affiliated with the college of fine arts, specifically with the communications discipline. Looking at the description of the communications majors from these schools each school has the following emphasis within their communications degree: advertising, public relations, and some form of journalism. These emphases build off and enable students to perform well in a student advertising agency. The skills that are used and learned in these majors directly correspond to the advertising industry as whole, which justifies why these student advertising programs are aligned with the college’s communications program. However, it is important to note that an experiential learning experience is supposed to be supplementary to these types of studies, not support the entire major as a whole. For the examples examined, the highlight for their advertising major, is the student advertising agency, not necessarily the coursework, or any other benefits from the major itself – the student advertising agency is the main benefit. While Brigham Young University’s, Boston University’s, and University of Nebraska – Lincoln’s programs were all very similar there were a couple universities that 7 had a different layout and philosophy. Penn State has an advertising and public relations club called AD/PR Club. Instead of mainly focusing on advertising, Penn State’s program also focused on public relations. Unlike the previous examples that operate similar to an actual advertising agency, Penn State’s program is formatted like a club. They do not work with clients, but they are a division of the 4 A’s, an organization that champions advertising agencies and helps support and teach organizations how to thrive in the industry. Given this program is a division of the 4 A’s, the significant factor of this program is attending the National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC) every year to compete (Penn State AD/PR Club, 2015). The other unique program was VCU’s Brandcenter. This particular program served as the model for our program. VCU’s Brandcenter is a master’s program, which also functions like an advertising agency with very specific roles and responsibilities for each student that match job descriptions in an ad agency. This includes copy writers, account management, strategists, designers, and art directors. Each student is given a specific role out of this list, which allows greater understanding and skill development within each students’ specialty, which is something we want to mimic in our own program. The students work together, like an ad agency, to create work for their clients and deliver a final product under the mentorship of several industry professionals. This philosophy and experience was exactly what we wanted to mimic. With the insights gathered from the initial research, ADTHING, was launched in September of 2016. With the following premise: “The agency staffed by students, and run by pros”. ADTHING not only allows students to implement their creativity in a realworld setting, but also lets them do that with professional guidance. At ADTHING, we 8 accept that most advertising sucks, but we want to fix that by creating ads that make an impact, tell a story, and push the brand’s message. We started out with 15 students, from all over campus. Any student on campus can join ADTHING, regardless of their major. They simply need to be passionate about advertising. Modeled after VCU’s Brandcenter, each student was given a very distinct role. The students were either copywriters, strategists, account managers, or art directors. The concept was to provide students with real experience in the advertising industry. They work with real clients on real projects, and hopefully see real results. In addition to real professional experience the real differentiating factor for our program as a whole was the level and presence of professional mentorship and guidance. Bill Oakley, a former Chief Creative Director for McCann World group, was hired to be the Executive Director of ADTHING to provide mentorship for the students and guidance on a day to day basis, so students will learn to create a quality product for their clients. In addition to Bill’s expertise, we were also able to put together a world-class advisory board to help the further mentor the students, provide client work and assist the students in finding internships and eventually full-time offers. See below for the full list of ADTHING’s advisory board members. 9 With this framework in place, ADTHING launched and began operations. ADTHING’s Current State Currently, ADTHING is still a thriving, evolving, and growing program. 25 students comprise our staff of talented individuals and they fall into the following job descriptions: account managers, strategists, art directors, copy writers, and film. Since we have launched the program there has been a great need from our clients for film work. This includes anything from branding videos to TV spots, so we felt it was appropriate to have a full film team that would be able to address the need for film work our clients were constantly looking for. The film team is comprised of the art directors and copy writers already in the organization, so the film team, is simply adding another capability to their other creative abilities. 10 Since the program started we have served over 18 different clients. The clients we have had are (See Exhibit A): - FREEB!RDS World Burrito - University of Utah Athletics - Sono Sushi Express - HowWeDie.org - Rags - U Health - David Eccles School of Business - Rehabilitation Innovation Center (Tetradapt) - The University of Utah - University Federal Credit Union - U Health Plans - Cicero/ Ed Direction - Cloud Interactive - The Utah Daily Chronicle + KUTE - Planned Parenthood - Ivory Homes - Alpha Coffee - E-Bike (University of Utah) - Lassonde Entrepreneurship Institute - Bento Truck 11 With all of these clients, students have been able to produce work (See Exhibit A) to boost their portfolios and experience working with real clients in an agency setting. In all of this client work, ADTHING has been able to earn approximately $75,000. This money helps fund scholarships for the students and any expenses (equipment, travel costs etc.) that are incurred while completing work. In being able to provide scholarships for our main staff, it allows them to focus more on school and ADTHING as a whole, instead of worrying about working in order to pay for tuition. Revenue also helps facilitate student experiences. Currently, we have been taking students to industry conferences once a year. We attended the 3% Conference (Gender Equity in Marketing) in New York City in 2016 and most recently attended SXSW in Austin, Texas. This allows the students to get a broad scope of the industry itself, learn from industry professionals, and of course network with other professionals in the industry. These experiences are priceless for the students and can quickly jump start their careers. Fortunately, the combination of the students work experience and networking has been serving its purpose - helping the students get jobs and internships. Over the past year and half students have been recruited by Wieden + Kennedy, RPA, Adobe, David & Goliath, McCann Worldgroup, Venables Bell + Partners, FCB Chicago, and Team One. Two of ADTHING’s first students received full time offers from MRM McCann, 6 months prior to graduation, and one more student received a full time offer right after graduation. The students are working hard and employers are noticing. Currently, ADTHING is mainly and extracurricular activity that is supplemental to their classes. However, within the last year, you can now get class credit for 12 participating in the program. Any student can sign up for the ADTHING Experience course, after being hired and added to the agency. It is a one credit hour course that a student can take up to three times (three semesters), in order to cumulatively receive three credits which can commonly be used as elective credit. It is not required to take this course, but is an option for students if they need the class credit. Improvements for the Future Moving forward from ADTHING’s initial success, we want to maintain many of the concepts we already have in place. We want to maintain on our focus on client work and providing as much real-life experience for the students as possible. However, we did run into some issues regarding work load. Currently we have a staff of 25 people and we started with 15. The program grew and we added more students as needed, but after seeing the amount of work each student had on their plate, we realized that it is critical to keep the staff down to about 18 or 20 people. This allows for a more consistent workflow, given the typical amount of client work we have coming in. Instead of staff members waiting around for a new client because they do not have any work, it would be better for the students to have a consistent amount of work. Smaller staff allows for a richer experience for these students. Another item moving forward is a small change in job descriptions. Currently, we have the following job titles: copywriters, account managers, strategists, creative directors, and a film crew. After going through our client process over the past 18 months, it became very clear that there were consistent problems with the account managers and strategists understanding their roles and where their responsibilities began and ended. More specifically, accounts focused more on the client relationship, deadlines 13 and meetings. While, strategists primarily focus on the development of the creative brief based on the clients’ needs and wants. Both strategy and accounts need to work seamlessly, but sometimes the strategist ended up being more of the client contact and the account manager would work more on the creative brief and development. Given this conflict of interest, moving forward, the account manager position and the strategist position should be combined, so one person will be handling the strategy and account management responsibilities. The job title would change to an account planner and will include the responsibilities of a strategist and an account manager (Exhibit B). In addition to reducing confusion regarding responsibilities, this will also enrich the experience for students in this role by combining administrative/organizational skills and creative skills that are both valued and needed in an agency environment. In order to further elevate the student experience, it would be also be very beneficial to expand more on the mentorship aspect. It would be helpful and more educational if Bill put together teaching or learning sessions every two or three weeks that all staff would be required to go to. This would give Bill a chance to teach and expand on philosophies the students use in their work for ADTHING and would further the students’ knowledge of the industry as whole to have designated time to learn new aspects of the industry and have time with Bill. In theory, it would be nice to have one or two more full time mentors like Bill, in order to provide the students with more one-on-one attention on a day to day basis. However, given the staff and resources we have, there is another way to increase the level of mentorship the students are receiving. ADTHING needs to be utilizing their advisory board more. In addition to Bill’s teaching sessions, it would be great to have one or two 14 members of the advisory board come talk to the students, per semester, during these teaching sessions. This will not only foster a stronger relationship with the advisory board and the organization, but also allow the students to network with these individuals, as well as learn from what these professionals have experienced during their time in the industry. This board can provide invaluable knowledge for these students and are great resources that are currently being under-utilized. Overall, with these adaptations, ADTHING will only become a stronger organization that will better serve its students. Moving forward with these changes, will be a great step forward. It will also be crucial to maintain current efforts that are already in places, such as, the annual industry conference and continually searching for new clients. It would be even more beneficial for ADTHING to one day get a large brand name as a client and that is something worth striving for. ADTHING is set up for success. The program had a great start and is constantly evolving to improve the experience. With adaptation and the main concept of students having the opportunity to be creative and gaining actual industry experience with professional mentorship, at the heart of the organization, ADTHING will continue moving forward and hopefully become a highly acclaimed advertising program. 15 EXHIBITS EXHIBIT A – Client Work Examples Sono Sushi 16 Freeb!rds 17 David Eccles School of Business 18 19 How We Die 20 Tetradapt 21 U Health 22 EXHIBIT B – ADTHING Job Descriptions Account Planner: Account Planners create the communication strategy for an advertising campaign: how to talk to the right audience, as well as setting the tone and message of the campaign. Planners are responsible for writing the “creative brief” and for providing the ideal environment for creative development They combine market data, qualitative research, and product knowledge within that brief to enable the creative team to produce innovative ideas that will reach consumers. Planners make sense of all of the stuff Planners become the “brand ambassadors” – evangelizing, protecting, and growing a place in the consumer’s minds throughout the entire creative process. Copywriters & Art Directors: Often known as “creatives”, Art Directors and Copywriters produce innovative ideas for the visual and written elements of ad campaigns in all kinds of media Online film, digital/social marketing, posters, out of home, ambient and guerrilla marketing, print television, cinema. Art Directors and Copywriters work closely to form a creative team. While their titles suggest separate functions, in best practice their roles blur – Art Directors must also write and Writers must also visualize. 23 REFRENCES BU Ad Lab. (n.d.). Retrieved September 21, 2015, from http://buadlab.com BU College of Communications. (n.d.). Retrieved September 21, 2015, from http://www.bu.edu/com/academics/internships-opportunities/student-medi/adlab BYU Ad Lab. (n.d.). Retrieved September 18, 2015, from http://byuadlab.com BYU College of Fine Arts and Communications. (n.d.). Retrieved September 18, 2015, from http://comms.byu.edu/about Jacht. (n.d.). Retrieved September 24, 2015, from http://www.jacht.agency Penn State AD/PR (n.d.). Retrieved October 2, 2015, from https://pennstateadprclub.weebly.com University of Nebraska Lincoln College of Journalism and Mass Communications. (n.d.). Retrieved September 24, 2015, from https://journalism.unl.edu/adpr-major 24 VCU Brandcenter. (n.d.). Retrieved September 10, 2015, from https://brandcenter.vcu.edu/