News

Adverting students at Portland State stepped outside the box last month and wowed judges with a winning advertising campaign for Yahoo! for Teens. With their teen target audience in mind, the PSU student team came up with an ad campaign that that included the battle cry “Click on, Click In, Click Ass” and an alternate reality game accessible on the Web.

Eleven undergraduate students in the School of Business Administration beat out seven other university teams to win the Northwest region (District 11) of the American Advertising Federation’s annual National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC), held in Boise, Idaho, at the end of April. Four judges, including two from Yahoo! and two ad-industry professionals, scored the competition.

The PSU student team travels to Nashville, Tenn. in June to compete against 14 other universities from across the country in the national competition. Don Dickinson, director of the Advertising Management program at PSU, is the faculty advisor who will accompany the students on the trip.

Yahoo! has a conservative internal corporate culture, but the PSU students felt very strongly that if Yahoo! wants to reach the teen audience, the company will have to take some risks. All four judges agreed. According to Prof. Dickinson, Yahoo! judges at the Boise competition said regardless of who wins the national competition, the PSU team had some promotional ideas that Yahoo! is going to implement as soon as possible.

In addition to the NSAC student team, the momentum continues for the entire Advertising Management program as the spring term advertising campaigns class was also honored for excellence by being selected by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) as one of two university advertising programs in the country to create a public awareness and recruitment campaign for the new government agency. TSA has agreed that it will implement the campaign created by the winning school. TSA executives from Washington, D.C. will travel to PSU on June 8 for the final presentation.

The Advertising Management (AM) program is part of the PSU School of Business Administration. The goal of the AM program is to prepare students for a meaningful career in marketing communications. Students regularly find their way to positions in advertising agencies, in marketing departments on the client side, in media sales management and promotion, or as providers of niche services to agencies, clients and the media.

Source:
Don Dickinson (503-725-8533)
PSU School of Business Administration

For Immediate Release (#05-066)