Tag: Undergraduate Students

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FACULTY SPOTLIGHT: Difficult Year. Difficult Briefs. Smart Solutions.

Throughout his career, Temerlin professor Dr. Mark Allen has worked as an art director and designer for clients including the History Channel, the New York Yankees, Norton/Symantec, Martha Stewart, The Walking Dead, A&E Networks, HBO, the U.S. National Parks Service and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. His work has been recognized for creative excellence in the Print Regional Design Annual and Applied Arts magazine and by the Promotion Marketing Association, the Illustrators Society of Los Angeles and the Dallas Society of Visual Communications. He joined SMU’s newly established Temerlin Advertising Institute in 2003, where he currently teaches various creative advertising courses. Allen recently shared his insights into his students’ work and the shift in teaching creative courses brought about by the pandemic.

“I knew that teaching creative studio-based classes virtually was going to be a challenge, but it was much harder than I anticipated. It was difficult to hold our weekly critiques—the lifeblood of our creative classes—on Zoom because we’re used to walking around the room, making notes, and drawing sketches on the work that plasters every available surface in the classroom. Losing the spatial, tactile dimension of what we do in the classroom was felt every time we met online. Additionally, there’s usually a lot of back-and-forth with the students. But humor and sarcastic banter are hard to pull off on Zoom when most of the class is on mute. More than anything, I miss hearing the flood of input from my students during a critique. They are so smart and so funny, and I depend on their eyes, ears and brains to back me up—and to challenge my ill-advised suggestions. Zoom only allows you to focus on one thing at a time: one voice, one image, etc. And I don’t usually run my classes like that,” Allen explains.

Continue reading “FACULTY SPOTLIGHT: Difficult Year. Difficult Briefs. Smart Solutions.”

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PROGRAM FEATURE: Why SMU Students Should Consider Temerlin’s Graphic Design Minor

Temerlin’s graphic design minor provides a basic understanding and development of skills necessary for message design across various media. Topics and skill sets may include identity (logos, branding collateral material, packaging), digital (social, mobile, online media), publication (magazines, newspapers, books), and other areas of design.

Professor Cheryl Mendenhall, program director for the graphic design minor, explains, “Learning to become a better visual communicator can enhance a variety of career paths. It’s so much more than learning the software used in the industry. It is about cultivating your ideas; using design principles of composition and layout; and learning about typography, imagery and color choices along with a little psychology to best present your ideas.” Research confirms the demand for graphic design skills:

  • The U.S. market size for graphic designers is $12.7 billion.
  • A Content Marketing Institute study reveals that 51% of business-to-business marketers say creating visual content is a priority.
  • According to a Digital Trends study by Adobe, 73% of companies invest in design to make their brand more recognizable than their competitors’.
  • Research by iScribblers shows that visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than text and that it takes twice as long to process and recognize words.

This year the Temerlin Advertising Institute has expanded the minor to include two new-upper level electives, Image-Making and Graphic Design for Digital Media. Image-Making explores various styles and techniques to produce conceptually based imagery. The second course, Graphic Design for Digital Media, examines specific design challenges posed by various digital media and platforms, including issues of scale, color, typography, resolution, file sizes and color modes.

Preview recent student graphic design work:

Learn more and apply to the graphic design minor here.

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INDUSTRY CONNECTIONS: Stone Boutique Partners with Campaigns Students

Stone Boutique is a Dallas-based fine and rare stone showroom that brings cutting-edge slab technology to the interior design consumer. Owners Francisco and Margarita Acosta are dedicated to disrupting the industry by leveraging their patented technology to pioneer a new start-to-finish purchasing experience. They explain:

“For us, discovering a once-in-a-lifetime slab is a magical experience. Over the course of our first 30 years in the industry, we watched in awe as pieces forged by the history of the world’s most intriguing places were unearthed, only to be delivered to the customer through a lifeless, inefficient, and frustrating processes. It wasn’t good enough for the customer or for us.”

The Acosta’s aspire to increase sales, expand offerings globally, and roll out a proprietary process to revolutionize the consumer journey. They have partnered this fall with Professor Peter Noble’s campaigns course seeking a complete integrated marketing and messaging strategy to achieve this goal. “We partnered with Stone Boutique for two reasons. First, they provide our senior advertising students with an unusual challenge — their business spans both business-to-business and business-to-consumer product categories. And second, with their proprietary technology Stone Boutique has the potential to rapidly grow from a relatively recent start-up into a leading global brand. They’re poised to disrupt the entire stone industry. At this stage in their brand development, Stone Boutique was interested in raising and enhancing awareness of their revolutionary stone selection process,” Noble explains. Temerlin students are eagerly working on the campaign; two teams will present a plans book and virtual presentation to the client early next month.

Our students greatly benefit from working with real-world class clients such as Stone Boutique.

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INDUSTRY CONNECTIONS: Advertising Course Connects Students to Internships

Last week the Temerlin Advertising Institute hosted its annual communications career fair, organized by Temerlin’s Sandi Edgar and held in conjunction with her Business Communications class. The evening began with Ivonne Kinser from Avocados From Mexico and Francisco Cardenas from LERMA/ breaking down their Super Bowl strategy and the cross-collaboration needed to produce their award-winning work. Students then met with agencies hiring for both full-time and internship positions.

Have a position you’d like to share with our students? Learn more here.

Thank you to all who participated:

Agency Entourage

Avocados From Mexico

Inspire

Launch Agency

LERMA/

MarketScale

RocketBrand

Slant Partners

The Power Group

The Richards Group

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INDUSTRY CONNECTIONS: Campaigns Class Lands Global Orthodontics Client

This fall, Professor Peter Noble’s undergraduate campaigns course partnered with the world’s largest manufacturer of professional dental products and technologies, Dentsply Sirona, for a unique B2B marketing challenge. In three teams, the students conducted three individual market analyses and audience surveys to conclude their capstone project with a fully developed marketing plan for how to increase visibility and drive attendance to the SureSmile multi-day education event. The winning team, Agency Incite, traveled to SureSmile 2020 in San Diego at the end of February to make their pitch live on stage.

“The submitted concepts provide valuable insights about our industry and user base. As creative strategies, they offer usable models, for example, to leverage user feedback or behavior or point out emerging trends and opportunities. For our company, this partnership returned significant assets in creative, research, and strategy,” said Dominique Mondou, Vice President Traditional and Digital Orthodontics.

Click here to learn more about campaign clients or contact Sandi Edgar for more information.

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AWARDS: Creative Students Win 9 AAF Dallas American Advertising Awards

The AAF American Advertising Awards is one of the industry’s largest creative competitions, attracting nearly 35,000 professional and student entries each year through local club competitions. Temerlin creative students won NINE American Advertising Awards (ADDYs) at the 2020 AAF Dallas awards show last week. “Our students represented us well in front of the Dallas advertising community tonight and with so many gold, silver and Best of Show winners advancing on, we’ll keep representing SMU at the regional and national levels” explains Professor Mark Allen.

Creative students have worked very hard over the past semester to produce several award-winning campaigns, and we couldn’t be happier to see them succeed. Professor Willie Baronet shares: “I’m so proud of all our students for killing it tonight, especially Gaelle and Anna Rose for taking home BEST OF SHOW!  And kudos to the TAI team for creating space for these students to flex their creative brilliance!”

Winners Include:

BEST OF SHOW

Anna Rose Corell & Gaëlle Gachelin / P3 (Magazine Advertising)

GOLD WINNERS

Anna Rose Corell & Gaëlle Gachelin / P3 (Magazine Advertising)

Sydney Bottum & Sophie Vos / Hello Fresh! (Magazine Advertising)

SILVER WINNERS

Olivia Childs / Keurig (Magazine Advertising)

Abby Coon & Charlie O’Brien / Slip (Poster)

Sam Smith, Avery Bouch, EJ Niemczyk / Beyond Meat (Integrated Campaigns)

Sam Smith, Avery Bouch, EJ Niemczyk / Beyond Meat (Illustration)

Olivia Childs & James Klopp / Native Deodorant (Illustration)

Anna Rose Corell & Gaëlle Gachelin / Diptyque (Animation or Special Effects)

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STUDENT SPOTLIGHT: Temerlin Students Featured in 2020 Lürzer’s Archive

It was back in the early 1980s that advertising copywriter and agency owner Walter Lürzer banged his fist down on the table and resolutely shouted out to himself: “If no one’s going to do it for me, I’m going to have to do it myself – for everyone!” What he was referring to, back in that dark pre-internet era, was the laborious process of hunting out and compiling advertising campaigns from around the world. In those days, there were not many ways of finding out how products and services were being advertised in, say, America, Asia, or individual European countries. The first issue of Lürzer’s Archive magazine was published October 1984 in Frankfurt, Germany which now has over 150,000 readers worldwide. Today, Lürzer’s Archive is the celebrated creative resource for advertising professionals worldwide which offers a full set of inspirational tools including Lürzer’s Archive magazine.

We celebrate Temerlin’s Kell Klopp and Megan Cruikshank’s Kong campaign which will be featured in the first issue of 2020! With this win, the Temerlin Advertising Institue’s overall Lürzer’s ranking is now #7 in the world and #4 in the United States.

Preview the award-winning work here: Continue reading “STUDENT SPOTLIGHT: Temerlin Students Featured in 2020 Lürzer’s Archive”

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INDUSTRY CONNECTIONS: Networking Students to Full-Time Positions

Recent Temerlin graduate Harrison Fiveash landed a full-time role as Sales Coordinator at Ampersand after graduating from SMU this past December. The opportunity arose when his professor, Peter Noble, endorsed the event in class claiming it was essential for advertising students. Looking back, Fiveash recalls, “per the norm – he was right.”

Presented by The Dallas 4A’s Council, the inaugural AdEdge program was conceived to propel graduating DFW advertising and marketing majors into their careers. Before attending the event, Fiveash researched the attending agencies and took notes on where he thought he’d be a good fit: “I had several questions and made small talk with the representatives. I also had a clear plan as to which position I was interested in. Asking, ‘Are you hiring more Sales Coordinators?’ instead of ‘Are you hiring any recent grads?”

The following Monday Fiveash followed up via email and scheduled an informational interview with a professional he met at the event. This is an assignment that students are guided through in ADV 4106- Professional Seminars, a course that teaches students how to navigate the industry and more. A week later, Fiveash received a call from Ampersand informing him of an open Sales Coordinator position and was hired, and accepted, on the spot. This position works with affiliates and agencies, ensuring advertising spots are ordered and run when scheduled. Regarding the new role, Fiveash shares “there’s room to grow vertically and horizontally. It’s a strong cultural fit, and it’s a good hybrid of my media background and potential future in sales.”

Harrison’s Advice for Students Seeking Full-Time Opportunities:

  • Always be early
  • Bring a notepad
  • Thank everyone for their time
  • Use your professors as resources- they want to help you and they know what they’re doing
  • Start looking for a job and networking now
  • Continue to learn. People hire intellectually curious people!
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INDUSTRY CONNECTIONS: Preparing Students for their Careers with StrengthsFinder

The Clifton StrenghtsFinder is a scientific 177 question assessment that measures an individual’s talents resulting in a unique “thumbprint” analysis of strengths. Understanding the sequence of these strengths is one of the keys to finding and managing a rewarding career. This week, Professor Amber Benson (right), a Gallop-Certified Strengths Coach, led Professor Sandi Edgar’s Advertising Business Communications course through a basic StrengthsFinder workshop. Here, students were guided through various exercises to understand their top strengths and how they may manifest in various aspects of their personal and professional lives. This insight provides an understating of motivations,  interactions with others, and the types of team members needed to compliment a person’s strengths. The students will use their individual strengths to explore personal branding with the ultimate goal to become more effective in interviews, networking, and the workplace. This project culminates with the Temerlin Advertising Institute career fair in March. Email to learn more: sandi@smu.edu.

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INDUSTRY CONNECTIONS: Students Rank Super Bowl Ads

By Kaleb Mulugeta

This Tuesday prospective and current advertising students gathered to rank and review Super Bowl LIV ads. Think of it as a Super Bowl party, two days after the Super Bowl, with no actual Super Bowl. Just commercials. An advertising student’s dream come true.

“The annual Super Bowl Ad Off is the perfect forum for both ad majors and non-ad students to discuss the most talked-about commercials of the year. One of the most important steps that someone interested in advertising can take is to expose themselves to as much work as possible. Not only that but developing a taste for what is good vs great vs what misses the mark is essential when entering this competitive field. Ad Club’s meetings provide the perfect place to discuss, learn and grow” explains Ad Club President Allie Hartman. Students gave their two cents on whether the ads were appropriate for the respective brands, how effective they were, and collectively raised an eyebrow at #BabyNut.

A poll at the end of the night crowned these spots as the best of the bunch:

  1. Google – Loretta 
  2. Alexa – Before Alexa
  3. Jeep – Groundhog Day

The most disliked ad of the game goes to Olay – Make Space for Women. It began as a strong empowering statement for women but they threw away everything in the last 3 seconds by using the “a woman makes a silly mistake” stereotype when an unknown button is pressed which ejects the astronauts from the space shuttle. They almost had it, too bad.

 Learn more about Ad Club and join here.