Three of the five winners of an advertising competition sponsored by Fuze Beverage, Karen Reed, Jessica Boyer and Lindsay Young (Jeff Farmer and Molly Schulz not pictured), show off their winning advertising campaign book with advertising professor David Regan. The five winners were awarded scholarship money and a trip to New York City to pitch their campaign to Fuze executives.
Last January, five MSU students had no idea that the senior project they worked on in Advertising 486 would win a national competition with Fuze beverages, a Coca-Cola-owned company that produces a number of healthy beverages in uniquely shaped bottles.
The students, part of Professor David Regan’s class, won the competition against more than 10 other design schools across the nation.
Then-advertising seniors Jessica Boyer, Jeff Farmer, Karen Reed, Molly Schulz and Lindsay Young were not close friends when they decided to become a team for their campaign – a project all advertising majors complete before graduating.
When told to pick a group, they looked around and randomly huddled together.
At the end of the semester, the team pitched their project on the last day of class using teleconferencing capabilities to Fuze, received their grade from Regan and left for the summer.
“Months later, in July, we got a response in our e-mail saying we won the whole thing,” Farmer said. “Oh my God, it was amazing. I actually got a text (message) from Jessica before I checked my computer. I didn’t believe it until I saw it myself. Then, I called everyone I knew and told them.”
On Aug. 21, the five team members and Regan traveled to New York City to pitch their project to about a dozen Fuze executives. The team received an $8,000 scholarship at an awards dinner. This might not be the last time some of them associate with Fuze either.
“We have told them that we are looking at a few of them for jobs as well,” said Bill Meissner, chief marketing officer of Fuze. “They looked very professional in corporate business wear and conducted themselves in a professional way as well. They were great.”
The group’s tagline for their pitch was “Real people, real healthy, real delicious.” The Fuze Web site shows celebrities drinking the product, but the team wanted to show that normal, everyday people drink it too. Their feature line said, “Live your dream. Drink Fuze.”
“It was based on the fact that everyone can relate to someone else,” Reed said. “Fuze is all about being real, and that was the big part of our campaign. We decided to start groups for market researching.”
The team searched for Fuze-lovers on Facebook.com and MySpace.com. They even created their own Facebook group and within 24 hours, more than 100 people joined. Their campaign focused on profiling people just like the Web sites do.
Professor Regan said this real-world experience is going to work wonders for the group’s confidence, resume and ability to sell a product, because he knows professionals that never did anything like this at such a young age.
“I’ve seen people sell crap in a brown paper bag,” Regan said. “The pitch is important. It’s wild and I’m ashamed to say it, but it’s true.”
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