Marketing class runs campaign for Hippodrome

Students in Advertising & Integrated Marketing, a class taught by Leslie Kendrick, have worked as the AdHop advertising agency running a real marketing campaign for the Hippodrome Theatre.

The class, which is sponsored by the Center for Leadership Education (CLE), allows students to discover how the development of marketing strategies and tactics are impacted by promotional budgets and the way in which marketers communicate with consumers.

Kendrick, who also serves as the CLE’s internship coordinator, brings her 12 years of experience as a marketing practitioner to the classroom. Gabrielle Iturralde, a co-manager of the class’s Advertising & Multimedia team, noted the insight Kendrick gives students into the world of advertising.

“She makes sure that anything that is sent to the client is up to par with what would be done in the professional world,” Iturralde said. “We had our website, which was very finicky, and she would say, ‘No, I’m not showing that to the client.’”

Students in the class were divided into different departments of the agency, including Advertising & Multimedia, Public Relations & Social Media, Campaign/Events, Research and Reports/Presentations.

All communication between the clients, departments and Kendrick was facilitated by the two CEOs — seniors Georgina Rupp and Emily Birge — who ensured that all departments are on track and that the media and campaign timelines run smoothly.

Both the managers and CEOs work closely with Kendrick to make sure the client objectives are met and that their campaign message and theme is effectively reflected in all of our efforts.

As part of a three-week awareness campaign for the Hippodrome Theatre and the Broadway show Dirty Dancing, the class designed several giveaway items, flyers and posters that were distributed at events around campus and produced three commercials.

“We had an interesting problem presented to us, and as a result of our efforts, I believe that a greater percentage of the student body now knows about the Hippodrome and its offerings,” senior Sofia Arruda, who served as an Advertising & Multimedia co-manager, wrote in an email to The News-Letter.

While Arruda wrote she learned a lot from the class, she also made suggestions for how the course could be improved.

“For future semesters, I suggest that there should be a department dedicated solely to website design and digital content,” Arruda wrote in an email to The News-Letter. ”It would be more effective to have a student proficient in website design to focus on running the site, which in turn would benefit the campaign as a whole.”

While Iturralde echoed Arruda’s desire to improve the technical aspects of the campaign, she also sees the need for further communication between different groups in the class.

“Some things need to be more interwoven between departments,” she said.

Though the class is not technically an internship, Arruda found that the class has provided her with valuable skills in a field she hopes to enter after graduation.

“The class is not supposed to be referred to as an internship, but because of all of the effort and time we put in as managers, it is a great opportunity and has given us real-world experience,” Arruda wrote in an email to The News-Letter.