Final Class Project: Preparing an Advertising Campaign

If you are an advertising major or taking a class in the subject, preparing some sort of advertising campaign may be part of your final project. It gives you an idea of what you will need to do if you do campaign work in your career, how to successfully work on a team, and exercising your creative side.

I gained experience in creating a campaign when I had Principles of Advertising. We had to put together a project for our school football team. The tips I am going to give you will be with my personal experience from the project as well as a general idea of what each part is about in mind.

The first thing you need to do is come up with a slogan for your project. This needs to be unique and creative, rather than using a cliché. You may try taking a creative spin on the brand name you are advertising for. For example, our football coach's last name is Hale. One group, instead of saying "Give 'Em Hell" pegged their campaign slogan as "Give 'Em Hale." This doesn't have to be a difficult thing to do.

Your next step is to figure out who your competition is and analyze what they offer. Pay attention to similarities and differences between the companies. You will need to figure out why your campaign will be bigger and better than what your competition has already done. Ask yourself:

How do they draw customers and clients?

What amenities or facilities are offered that you don't have? (Example: for a football team, compare stadium seating capacities)

What challenges are they facing? How do they plan on improving?

Once you have analyzed your competition, the next step is to form a big idea. The big idea is the concept that will set your campaign apart from the rest. What will you do to attract customers? My group chose a discount card that football spectators could use at local restaurants and business if the football team won. Other groups decided to have inflatable games set up prior to kick off. The key is to find something that will be popular with a wide range of customers and clients and doesn't have to change constantly.

After you have your big idea formed, you must focus on promotion. One of the most popular ways to promote something is the use of a TV commercial.

In order to plan your commercial, you have to draw a storyboard. To do this, you must plan out what will happen in the commercial. Then, you draw the way you want each scene to look on television, along with a description of what is happening.

There are other ways to promote, though. If you are going to go beyond television, figure out:

Who will be involved in the promotion?

When will it happen?

Will they be giving out any free items, and if so, what?

How often will you hold a promotional event?

When you are finished preparing the necessary elements of your presentation, put them in a three ring binder or other portfolio to present to your professor.

You may also want to prepare a Power Point as well to supplement your presentation and illustrate your points.

Learning advertising is a great way to learn about how products are promoted and what advertising executives do to make their product successful. If you enroll in an advertising course, you can expect to make decisions similar to what professionals make everyday. Make sure to put a lot of effort into your project since it will probably count for a large portion of your grade. Be creative, focus on drawing customers as you would for a real world campaign, and make sure to get as much out of it as possible.