Each semester, students enrolled in the Greenlee School’s Advertising Campaigns course work for a real client on a semester-long project to find solutions to the client’s advertising/marketing/public relations needs.
The spring 2016 semester campaigns course, taught by Lecturer Catherine Huggins, worked with Terrace Hill, the official residence of the Governor of Iowa, which is also a museum and a National Historical Landmark. The class worked with Iowa’s First Lady Christine Branstad and her assistant Diane Becker throughout the semester to identify Terrace Hill’s advertising needs and find potential solutions for the small staff and volunteers to carry out.
With such a high-profile client, I wanted to keep tabs on this story throughout the semester, with the intention of doing a comprehensive piece once the project was finished. First, I made sure to attend an on-campus meeting that the class held with Branstad and Becker, taking a few photos and getting a feel for the project, the client’s needs and students’ perceptions of their task for the semester.
After the class’s initial meeting, teams had the semester to conduct research to base their campaigns on. Knowing that each team was working autonomously, I decided it would be best to meet with each team again before their final presentations and then to attend the presentations and see the final campaigns each team presented. I snapped photos (below) of the presentations and was able to interview Mrs. Branstad and Ms. Becker for the my feature on the class’s project.
