Hopkins students taking part in Professor Leslie Kendrick’s Advertising & Promotions course have been tasked with creating a comprehensive marketing campaign for the Navy SEALs. The class operates in conjunction with EdVenture Partners, a firm dedicated to developing innovative industry-education partnership programs. The company works to connect college students with real-life clients. This year, EdVentures is serving as the liaison between Kendrick’s students and the Navy SEALS.
“The whole class is set up as a real-world marketing experience in conjunction with EdVenture,” senior Sarah Gubara, a Psychology and Brain Sciences major who is in charge of public relations for the campaign, said.
The stakes are high; the campaign is a part of the Scholastic Achievement Award competition in which the winning campaign, as judged by the Navy SEALS, will have five student managers plus their faculty members flown with all expenses paid to Coronado, Calif. to present to the Navy.
Students in the class have dubbed their marketing agency “Blue Jay Strategies,” and have divided themselves into a number of task-oriented departments, including but not limited to public relations, marketing and budget. Junior Kari Burdt and senior Sadie Howser are the co-account coordinators, or the de facto CEOs. “I am in charge of managing all of the departments, corresponding with EdVenture, leading group manager meetings, and after Professor Kendrick makes her introductions, I lead the class with my co-CEO,” Burdt said.
Her responsibilities are as multitudinous as they sound. Burdt said that even when the class is not in session, she receives upwards of forty e-mails a day pertaining to the course.
However, she is confident that the experience she is gaining in the classroom is unique and invaluable.
“This class is an amazing experience and like no other at Hopkins,” she said. “Having the opportunity to work with a prestigious client such as the SEALS while I’m still in college is unbelievable. As an agency coordinator, I believe that I will leave this semester with a greater understanding of how to manage groups, how to communicate with clients and how to be an even better leader. Already, this is one of the most practical and exciting courses I have taken in my three years at Hopkins.”
Burdt’s experience with the course jibes well with what Tony Sgro, CEO of EdVenture, hopes to achieve with the partnership between his organization and Hopkins. “We give students the opportunity to work with real business clients, and provide them with real money to spend,” he said. Students in the course are allocated $3,000 to carry out their campaign. “That just doesn’t happen in education. Students are held accountable as if they are operating a real business, and, in essence, they are,” Sgro said. “Our goal is to provide students with job experience, to give them a leg up in the market.”
Sgro went on to describe the benefits of partnering with college students in this and past campaigns. “The creativity of Gen Y,” as he calls the current generation of youth, “are boundless. We number 85 million.” Sgro also cited the perks of having dozens of college students at different universities competing to win over one client, who ultimately reaps the benefits of having such a multitude of young talents performing for them. “Through [the EdVenture] model, the client is given numerous deliverables by the students, and tons of options to choose from, from the group that has made a great video, to the students who have used social media to reach thousands of people in some innovative way. That multiple factor is really important.”
No other pre-requisite courses aside from Introduction to Marketing is expected of students interested in taking the class, unless a student would like to take on a position of leadership as one of the Department Managers. These are positions in which, “some students are selected, based on an application process,” as Kendrick wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter. “Absolutely everyone who is interested in business should take this class, and there are students who are engineering and science-oriented majors who are taking it and enjoying it,” Burdt said.
Paul Martin, a computer science major with a minor in entrepreneurship & management, is one of them. Martin is on the Advertising and Multimedia team and oversees the design of the student web site. “This class has enabled me to gain valuable experience working on a multidisciplinary team on a real-world advertising project for a prestigious client,” Martin said.
Currently, five other groups of students at other universities are participating in the campaign, including nearby Coppin State. Sgro also explained what the company looks for in a winning ad campaign.
“An all-around top-shelf performance,” Sgro said. “Great research that leads to guided strategy that leads [to] wonderful traditional and nontraditional marketing methods.”
Blue Jay Strategies has specifically been tasked with increasing awareness of the Navy SEALS to minority male athletes. Due to time and budget constraints, Blue Jay Strategies has focused their campaign specifically to target African American male athletes, aged 18 to 24.
Kendrick was careful to clarify that this does not preclude raising awareness in males of all races and of any level of involvement in sports. Blue Jay Strategies hopes to increase awareness of the SEALS by 20 percent to their target.
However, some people felt that the fact that the class took on a military campaign unecessarily politicized it.
Writing Seminars Professor Wayne Biddle found this focus on minorities in the Navy’s recruiting efforts, and by extension the Hopkins’s marketing efforts, offensive. “Racialized military recruitment, which is obviously what this project amounts to, is morally repugnant,” Biddle said. “The military services have been widely criticized for years for such campaigns. And it is appalling to see the Navy leverage its longstanding special relationship with Johns Hopkins with this offensive program.” Biddle’s primary grievance with the Navy’s recruiting campaign is concerned with the fact that it is “racially targeted.”
Kendrick, however, said that efforts of the Navy are merely in the interests of diversifying the ranks of the SEALS, which are largely Caucasian. “[The SEALS] are focusing efforts, including those of this class, on diversifying their work force in many areas,” Kendrick wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter. “This is not something unusual for a government agency or a private corporation. And while we have a diversity focus, all male athletes (club, varsity and intramural) are going to be included in our efforts [to raise awareness],” she wrote.
Sgro corroborated Kendrick’s point. “The Navy SEALS are extremely undiversified and are working to increase percentages of minorities in their ranks,” he said. “Tony Madus, secretary of the Navy SEALS, has expressed his desire to increase the amount of minorities.”
Biddle, however, felt that any campaign targeted at a certain demographic, even when it is for the sake of diversity, was morally wrong and suspicious.
“[The Navy SEALS targeting African Americans with the aims of diversifying their ranks] is an old and threadbare rationale that the military has been using to camouflage these targeted recruitment campaigns,” Biddle said.
Kendrick, on the other hand, pointed out that Blue Jay Strategies was only raising awareness for the SEALS, not actively recruiting. Biddle, as stated above, considered advertising for the SEALs in this respect “ultimately amounted to [racialized military recruitment].”
In any case, Blue Jay Strategies is so far faring well in the competition. Sgro summed up the team’s performance thus far as “awesome.”
“You guys are always phenomenal,” Sgro said, referring to present and past groups of Hopkins students who have taken the class. Last year’s efforts were focused on marketing the Nissan Cube.
This Thursday, Blue Jay Strategies has an in-person meeting with the Navy SEALS, who will be flying in and visiting Hopkins from their base in Coronado, Calif. At this strategic marketing meeting, Blue Jay Strategies will present their research findings to the SEALS and have the campaign that they have been planning so far be critiqued and approved.
Until then, Blue Jay Strategies remains tight-lipped about the particulars of their marketing campaign. “Everything must be approved by the client [the SEALS] before being disseminated,” said Gubara. “Until then, everything is up in the air.”
