Saturday, May 3, 2008

One Down (and it should feel better than it does)

If you've been wondering why I haven't blogged in awhile, its because I've been in Advertising Campaigns hell. Since my degree is in Advertising, Advertising Campaigns is the capstone course for my major. The course was designed so that the students felt like they were in an actual advertising agency. On the first day of class, we were put into the groups that we would be in for the entire semester, we were given an actual client, and we were immediately put to work. Our client was Super Estrella, which is a Spanish/English radio station thats based in L.A. but has a branch in Albuquerque. They play approximately 75% Spanish pop songs, and 25% English pop hits. The client came in and talked to us about their company and about the problems they were having building clientele in the city. We built an entire campaign from top to bottom and we have been working on it all semester. Last week, we had to turn our plansbook in (which was a business plan that discussed every aspect of our campaign-ours was about 30 pages-another groups was 60 pages-but they're overachievers). We had created four different billboards, and promotional items such as t-shirts, tank tops, water bottles, beer koozies, and bumper stickers. Yesterday, we gave our pitch to the client and they loved it. Just like in the real world, the client picked the pitch that they liked the best. They didn't pick us (they picked that overachieving group that I already mentioned) but they did tell us that if our professor didn't give us an A, that we should re-negotiate. Our professor grades us on his own terms (he even said that in past years, there has been groups that won the competition but did not get As in the class). But now that its over, I'm a little sad. I had far from the normal college experience. Usually when people go to college, they make lots of friends and have lots of good times. I've never really had a lot of friends in college, but this semester was different. The group that I was in was the perfect group for me. If I was in any other group, I would have gone crazy either because they worked too much (overachievers) or didn't work enough. And after working for an entire semester with these people (as well as a few really long nights-especially the night before we turned our plansbook in) we have grown really close. Knowing how things are, even if we say that we will stay in touch, I doubt we will. These are the closest friends I've had in my college, and it makes me sad that we didn't get to know each other until the last semester before we graduated. I suppose that this is a part of life but it doesn't make it any easier to swallow.
P.S. For those of you in Albuquerque, the radio station is 105.9 FM if you're interested or if you just want to make sure I'm not making it up.

3 comments:

Nene said...

Well even though it's over I'm glad you had this positive experience. I feel it was a positive experience since you worked so well with your group and made such good friends with them. You should feel proud of this, as we are of you.

Keira said...

Cool project. I didn't realize you were doing such in depth stuff. I'm impressed.

KWCooley said...

Throughout my time in college I had a group of English Major friends. We had many classes together and most of us were in the honors society as well. Since we graduated I lost touch with all of them, mostly because many of them had to leave the state to find jobs. Though I think I did invite one of them to my wedding. It happens. The thing to take away is the positive impact those people had on you. And if you really want to stay friends, e-mail or Facebook is a great way to stay in touch.