Undergraduate Students Pitch the Ad Council on Integrated Marketing Plan for Mission-Driven Campaign

Wendy Zajack, adjunct faculty at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business and associate professor of the practice at the School of Continuing Studies, believes that communications has the ability to change lives – a concept undergraduate business students experienced first-hand this spring semester. 

As part of Zajack’s Integrated Marketing Communications course, students developed an integrated marketing plan for the Ad Council, a national nonprofit that educates people and inspires action through innovative communications campaigns on a variety of important issues. 

First, students learned the critical elements of developing marketing strategies – identifying the problem, engaging in research, and setting goals and objectives for the campaign – with an emphasis on thinking creatively and strategically, as well as the importance of humanity. Then, students put those lessons into practice by creating a mock integrated marketing campaign for the Ad Council.

“I always relish the opportunity to work with real-world clients, particularly when it’s a mission-oriented marketing campaign that seeks to better the world,” said Paige Lane (B’26). “It was impactful for me to be able to contribute positively in this way.”

After diving into case studies and previous Ad Council campaigns, students explored ways to amplify the organization’s “Never Happens” heatstroke prevention campaign, produced in partnership with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), to prevent hot car deaths and spread awareness of the issue.

“This project was different because we weren’t marketing a product, we were trying to raise awareness to an issue,” said Mason Gudger (B’26). “I had never done that before, and I think a lot of my classmates hadn’t either. It gave us a new perspective and helped us understand how to create urgency in a campaign.”

At the end of the semester, students presented their pitches to representatives from the Ad Council, exploring a variety of campaign ideas and approaches to reach the target audience: parents of young children. 

“The students had a great understanding of the issue and the target audience,” said Brittney Crosby, assistant campaign manager at Ad Council. “Their research was thorough, some of their insights were things I hadn’t even considered! I appreciated how they approached the issue from different perspectives and thought outside the box to extend the message of the campaign.”

By working with a real-world client, students gained valuable hands-on experience and applicable skills to jobs across a variety of industries. To Zajack, this type of learning is invaluable. 

“To be an effective marketer and communicator in today’s complex world, you have to be able to step into the shoes of your target audience – what impressed me most was how well the students did that,” she said. “These are the kinds of marketing skills AI can’t replicate –  empathy, understanding human behavior, and recognizing that people often say one thing and do another. This project gave students deep insights into human behavior, which is foundational to exceptional marketing and communications.”