All J345 students will take part in a collaborative agency project to create an advertising campaign for a fictional client. This project includes two parts:

1) Developing and designing a full advertising campaign plan book (about 50 pages)
2) Presenting your ideas as an agency in a campaign pitch to a group of experts at the end of the semester
Students will be assigned a client and an agency in the beginning of the semester (positions will be assigned at the discretion of the instructor and the teaching assistant). You will work with this team — which we think of as your agency — throughout the semester in a variety of activities, including the campaign plan and pitch.

Agencies have at least five positions, and each position is responsible for certain contributions to the final campaign plan. These positions may be divided depending on the size of the agency. For more information about each position, please check their responsibilities in the section about that position.

Your final campaign plan should contain five sections:

• Situation analysis and secondary/primary research summary
  responsibility of the research director
• Campaign strategy and message strategy
  responsibility of the account manager
• The Big Idea, creative concepts and creative executions
  responsibility of the creative director
• Traditional and interactive media plans
  responsibility of the media director
• Public relations and promotions plan
  responsibility of the public relations/promotions director

Some basic information needed in each section is provided on this site. For detailed information and to completely develop each of these components, you should be reviewing lectures, lecture notes, additional readings, in-class discussions, and research and reference materials.

Even though each person in the group has primary responsibility for one of the five sections of the campaign report, it is essential that the group work together on all sections because they are very much interrelated. Both your individual and your total team project score will be dependent, in part, on how well you work together as a team and evenly divide the workload.

In general, when developing and writing each of the sections:

• ALWAYS include the rationale for all of your campaign decisions. You can’t do this enough.
• ALWAYS make sure your situation analysis covers key facts and identifies the MEANINGS or IMPLICATIONS of those facts.
• ALWAYS link your campaign strategy to what you learned in the research from your situation analysis and the three key issues you identify.
• ALWAYS be sure your media, creative and PR/promotions plans tie back to your situation analysis and campaign strategy.
• ALWAYS cite your sources properly. Sections without proper sourced documentation will have points deducted.
• Do not plagiarize other work; you will be subject to the class academic integrity policy

Be sure to check the FAQs for answers to some commonly asked questions.