Real ads, real clients: 14 students head to Spokane for advertising competition; ‘Pretty prestigious’ contest is a first for OSU-Cascades | State

‘Pretty prestigious’ contest is a first for OSU-Cascades

Published: April 16. 2009 4:00AM PST

Business students from Oregon State University-Cascades Campus will head to Spokane, Wash., this morning and be the first from the OSU system to compete in the National Student Advertising Competition.

OSU-Cascades marketing professor David Knuff, who’s leading 14 students to the regional finals of the competition, said the event is a “pretty prestigious” contest, one that will give the students a chance to get some real advertising experience.

“It’s every aspect of creating a real campaign, from idea to research to presentation,” Knuff said. “All the things that go into creating an ad campaign in the real world, they’re experiencing it.”

Knuff said it’s the first time a student team from the Oregon State University system has participated in the competition, which is organized by the American Advertising Federation. The contest asks roughly 150 student teams from around the country to create and pitch an advertising campaign for a real client, who subsequently promises to use the winner’s campaign to promote a product or company initiative.

This year, the client is the Century Council, an Arlington, Va.-based nonprofit organized by distillers to fight underage drinking and drunken driving.

On Wednesday at the branch campus’ building on Awbrey Butte, five of Knuff’s students gave a mock pitch of their campaign to fellow business students, faculty and school administrators. The five were selected by their classmates to make the pitch, although a total of 19 students enrolled in Knuff’s fundamentals of research marketing course helped draft the campaign. Some the students are unable to make the trip due to work commitments.

Interim Dean Becky Johnson, after hearing the mock pitch, said that in many collegiate fields of study, national contests are an expected part of the curriculum, though that’s not always true for smaller schools.

“To be able to give students at an institution of this size a chance at a national contest is a great opportunity for them … and will be great for their career aspirations,” Johnson said.

Roughly 700 students are pursuing degrees at OSU-Cascades, and the school’s business program has the largest enrollment, said the school’s director of communications, Christine Coffin.

Knuff said the students’ trip to Spokane is mostly funded by the Advertising Federation of Central Oregon, a membership group made up of local advertising and marketing agencies.

The regional contest in Spokane will be held Friday and will feature student teams from 11 Northwest universities pitching their campaigns to a panel of judges and representatives of the Century Council. A winner will be selected to then compete against other regional winners at the finals, to be held in Washington, D.C., in June.