Purdue Northwest Vying for Another National Title

Purdue-Northwest-colorAfter placing first in the American Advertising Federation’s National Student Advertising Competition two years ago, another team of Purdue University Northwest Calumet Campus students has qualified for this year’s finals, June 5 at Anaheim, Calif.

The PNW Calumet contingent of 20 marketing and communication students, supervised by Assistant Clinical Professor of Marketing Matt Hanson, advanced through district and semi-final competition to qualify with seven other institutions nationwide in the elite eight of what arguably is the super bowl of competitive college advertising.

Integrated marketing campaign
The American Advertising Federation partners each year with a major corporation to challenge some 150 college student teams to develop an integrated marketing campaign for a specific product, service or brand aimed at diverse target markets. This year’s competition called for competitors to develop a campaign for Snapple beverage products.

“Our students would not quit until they fully encompassed all of the areas of the Snapple brand into their new campaign,” said Hanson, who teaches the PNW 42900 Advertising Campaigns course, in which students prepare for the competition. “They took Snapple’s history, the brand equities and all of its current initiatives and created a campaign that could seamlessly transition into the next phase of marketing.”

Student team members
Presenters for the PNW Calumet team are Alyssa Gallegos of St. John, Zack Glasen of Munster, Michele Krueger and Marcus MacCartney of Hammond, Zoe Rozich of Schererville and alternate Evan Rowley of Munster.

Other team contributors are Yeonju Bae of Hammond; Terry Bocken and Chris Tiemens of Highland; Alex Dougherty of Schererville; Brandon Foore of Crown Point; Frank Gasparetti, Elisha Jachna and Ryan Wojtysiak of Dyer; Alyssa Grady of Lowell; Zack Hescott of Lansing, Ill.; Maria Lewis; Kyle Nagy of Cedar Lake; Lauren Peterson of DeMotte; and Alicia Ward of Mishawaka.

Final results will be announced June 6.

Purdue University Northwest
With recent approval by the Higher Learning Commission, Purdue University Calumet of Hammond and Purdue University North Central of Westville have unified to become Purdue University Northwest (PNW), a comprehensive regional university within the Purdue University system. PNW welcomes its first class of students this fall, when the institution becomes Indiana’s fifth largest public university, enrolling more than 15,000 students and offering 70+ degree programs.