JOUR4265

The annual National Student Advertising Competition is the premier college advertising competition that provides more than 2,000 college students the real-world experience of creating a strategic advertising/marketing/media campaign for a corporate client. Linked to the American Advertising Federation’s (AAF) National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC), the focus of this course is for students to be grounded in the NSAC challenge, including understanding the Client brief, reviewing secondary research, and conducting primary research. Students will review a variety of business, marketing, and communications materials related to the client (including existing consumer research) and conduct in-depth interviews to develop the beginnings of a sound communications strategy. Taking all inputs into consideration, students will propose a core problem (that a campaign can solve) and audience insights.
Students must apply to and be accepted into the UMN NSAC program to enroll in this course. Application information is sent out to strategic communication majors in early September and the application is available upon request at that time by contacting sjmcugs@umn.edu. This one-credit course is not a requirement or prerequisite for the second-semester J4264/NSAC/Campaigns course.