People go to college to prepare themselves for the real world. However, some classes are geared more towards this goal than others. Advertisement and Public Relations Campaigns (Ad/PR) gives students a chance to get hands-on experience in the advertising and Public Relations (PR) field by giving them a real-world client whom they will create for and then present an Ad/PR campaign to.
“The class works with a real world client to create an advertising, marketing and PR campaign for them,” said Rebecca Jones, assistant professor of communications and instructor of the class. “At the end of the semester, the class will pitch their campaign to the client, and then the client is free to pick and choose any of the concepts given to them that they might want to use.”
The class has worked with various clients over the years, not all of which were based out of Arkadelphia. This year, however, they are working with Downtown Arkedelphia.
“Downtown Arkadelphia, as an organization, was just formed recently and gained accreditation as part of Downtown Arkansas,” Jones said. “They’re trying to revive the downtown area, and actually came to us as a volunteer for our program so that we could help them out with that.”
Every client has a specific goal that they bring to the table when working with the Ad/PR Campaigns class. For Downtown Arkadelphia, that goal is to make the area more attractive to college students.
“The campaign we’re working on this year is meant to target college students,” Jones said. “The idea is to try and give Arkadelphia more of a college town feel. Obviously, there are some challenges here, but we hope to offer suggestions to Downtown Arkadelphia that will bring about incremental change that could eventually create a better relationship between the Arkadelphia community and the two colleges.”
Jones admits that this process will be challenging, but her class has access to several helpful resources, such as the Downtown Arkansas organization, that they can get direction and inspiration from.
“One of the ways that we might draw college students to the downtown are is through events,” Jones said. “There was a town in Mississippi that had a welcome back block party for their local college. One of our ideas was to maybe do something like that in downtown Arkadelphia.”
Jones believes that her class is a very effective tool for giving students hands-on experience. Student participation and enthusiasm is vital to producing a good final product.
“I’ve enjoyed the class so far,” said Devan Malone, a senior mass communications major. “It’s a great opportunity to get hands-on experience. We can’t just think about what we want to do, we also have to think about our clients and what they want to see happen.”
Jones and her class hope to deliver a useful and innovative set of ideas to their client. Overall, the students describe it as enjoyable, and Jones believes it to be a beneficial experience for everyone involved.
“It’s a hard class, and it brings its own stresses and challenges,” Jones said. “However, I love it that students take on that challenge. I’d recommend it to anyone who is interested.”
