Well beyond her accomplished athletic teams of course, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has always promoted and participated in healthy competition across an exceptionally wide range of academic and professional arenas, including advertising.
Hosted by the Hussman School of Journalism and Media, the annual Crash Campaign is a 24-hour competition where UNC’s top marketing and advertising students compete in pitching integrated marketing, media, and messaging deliverables to a select set of actual clients.
The students gain valuable experience and no doubt burn a little midnight oil by participating in a unique pressure-packed effort to connect the dots, employ some lessons learned, and sharpen their emerging strategic and creative talents. Teams are tasked to come up with marketing communications solutions for a number of participating local businesses and nonprofits. As such, the teams must work through every step of the new business process, from the client brief, to conducting research, developing communication and media strategy, and then creating and pitching their original campaigns to their prospective clients and a panel of industry judges, like yours truly. All conducted from start to finish within 24 hours, with the winners receiving a cash prize.
It’s an honor to be invited once again and I look forward to participating with some of my favorite students in an exciting Crash Campaign 2021 this weekend!