Tigers in Marketing

In each of the past five years, Dr. James Gaubert, senior lecturer in Marketing, and the marketing students in his Creative Inquiry Advertising Campaign Development and Execution have developed an advertising campaign from start-up to presentation. This Creative Inquiry teaches students how to collaborate, devise a strategy, and execute an advertising campaign which they then present at the national competition held by the American Advertising Federation in April each year. Teams have been very successful placing first in the nation with a General Motors campaign, fourth in the regional district with a State Farm campaign, and third in the nation with a Taziki campaign.

“This Creative Inquiry has helped me learn more about different companies and the strategies that they use. “By learning in a group setting, we are able to collaborate with each other and expand our ideas,” commented Carolina Blackwell, a junior Marketing major. The skills that the group developed carry over into the business world, and will contribute to their future career success. During the 2015 spring semester, the group worked with Pizza Hut to further develop their smart phone app and increase their orders through mobile application to 72%. They also examined the various ordering options, such as phone, computer, and mobile app, in order to compare people’s preferred methods of ordering.” Based on this research, the team will devise a strategy design to make the app more “user-friendly,” in order to increase Pizza Hut’s sales from customers using the mobile app.

The Creative Inquiry is broken up into four groups: strategy, research, creative, and media. These teams continually collaborate to ensure fluidity in the final project. As each project unfolds and the research is completed, the teams recombine to produce a presentation. The Creative Inquiry runs like an agency, with positions that help organize, express creativity, and meet deadlines. For senior Marketing major and president of the Creative Inquiry, Madison Clark, the most difficult challenge was getting individual groups to meet deadlines and getting the work completed in a timely and efficient manner so that the teams could combine to focus on the end product. The culmination of the 2015 project was a 16-page book that contained raw data and explanations of the campaign that the students designed.