RSJ NEWS

SAVE THE BEERS IMC CAMPAIGN04-17-2009By Amanda Shepherd

With a satiric "Save the Beers" campaign to combat binge drinking, UNR journalism and marketing students placed third in a regional competition Friday at the University of California, Berkeley. The team received a special award for "strategic risk-taking," said Bob Felten, advertising professor and a team coach.

"The compliments for the team flowed from competing teams, judges, agency recruiters and other observers," Felten said. "In a sea of sameness, our team’s courage, originality, high-quality work, professionalism and seamless presentation stood clearly apart from the rest.... We could not be more proud!"

Berkeley took first place, and runner-up went to Chico State.

UNR students Sara Piccola, Jeremy Long, Ashley Thompson, and Jarrod York were chosen by their classmates to present the campaign.

The competition, hosted by the American Advertising Federation, allows college students from across the nation to obtain real-world experience by planning a strategic advertising, marketing, and media campaign for a corporate sponsor.

This year’s sponsor for the National Student Advertising Competition is the Century Council, a national not-for-profit organization funded by distillers to fight drunk driving and underage drinking.

The first part of the campaign was to design a 32-page book filled with in-depth research and statistics to introduce Nevada's campaign. The second part was to present the campaign to a panel of judges and the sponsor.

UNR students decided to take a satirical approach to the issue, concluding from their research that it is the best way to relate to the sponsor’s target audience – college students between the ages of 18 and 24.

They designed a Save the Beers campaign, which presenter Sara Piccola described as “a cause that makes fun of a cause, while actually being a cause.” Playing off familiar

Sara Piccola demonstrates the Save the Beers identification card.

campaigns such as saving the rainforest or saving the whales, the UNR presentation urges students to “save” beers and join the “Moderation Nation.”

The campaign aims to make moderation, not responsibility, come to mind when students are drinking. Team research found that college students generally connect the phrase “responsible drinking” to the idea of not drinking and driving, based on campaigns by groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving. By focusing instead on moderate drinking, the campaign emphasizes negative health consequences of overconsumption and what students can do to prevent it.

One part of the campaign shows college students how to stay in the ‘moderation zone’ of drinking. Another portion depicts beer as an endangered species, saying it can be saved if binge drinking stops.

The campaign uses popular social media such as Twitter and Facebook along with the incentive of scholarships to reach the target audience.

Students were given their assignment in October and have been working together as a class in gathering information and doing extensive research since then.

Past sponsors of the competition include AOL, Yahoo! and Coca-Cola.

UNR won the national competition in 2003 with a campaign for Toyota Motor Sales.

The IMC competition coaches are Judy Strauss, associate professor of marketing; Bourne Morris, journalism professor; and Bob Felten, assistant professor of journalism.

In the district competition Friday, UNR competed against California State University, Chico; California State University, Fresno; San Jose State University; the University of California, Berkeley; and the University of San Francisco for the district title. District winner Berkeley will head to Arlington, Va., June 4-7 to compete for the national title against the winners from 14 other districts.

Juliana Bledsoe, Lindsey Doolittle and Jonathan Foster also contributed to this story.