Students win third in global advertising competition

A team of Emerson students from the Global Marketing Communication and Advertising (GMCA) graduate program were finalists in the International Advertising Association’s (IAA) 2011 InterAd XIII, a global competition for students studying marketing communications.

Emerson’s team of seven students: Michael Ridley of the Cayman Islands, Greg-Emile Willybiro of France/Central African Republic, Erika Schieck of Brazil and the United States, Wan-Hsuan Luo of Taiwan, Ruben Barton of the United States, Pooja Churiwal of India, and Julie Burdan of the United States, won first place in the United States and third place overall among teams worldwide.

To take part in the competition, students were asked to create a “game-changing brand campaign” for camera company Canon in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa regions. The campaigns they created had to be unexpected, culturally significant, and original with media or technique and put Canon “at the forefront of imaging and technology.”

Emerson’s team created a fully integrated brand campaign around the idea of digital camera users “jumping” into a more professional level of cameras, while supporting those consumers who have “jumped” in the past. The students completed the campaign plan in just two weeks as part of their graduate capstone course.

“Rather than focus on the traditional camera target audience of tourists and proud parents, we chose to target those camera users who are ready to move to a more serious level of photography,” said Burdan, who was the project’s account manager.

Ridley, who was the media planner and producer, added that “with a small budget and large territory, we wanted to focus on the power of social networks and nontraditional media to create the most media impressions and increase consumers’ consideration for professional-level Canon products.”

The IAA InterAd is a unique global competition that provides marketing-communications students at IAA-accredited institutes and other recognized tertiary institutions, colleges, and universities with real-world campaign development experience.