CONTEXT
Within the American Advertising Agency (AAF) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, I had the honor of being selected to work for Midnight Oil Advertising, a student-run, full-service agency within the organization. We work with real clients right on campus. Upon working for Midnight Oil for 2 years, I worked as a Copywriter for two clients: The Brand Team and Industrial Donut.
Find out more about Midnight Oil Advertising here.
CLIENT
THE BRAND TEAM: My junior year, I worked with the most important client of all: ourselves! The Midnight Oil Brand Team was a unique team to be on as our normal every day activities did not mirror those with clients outside of the agency. Instead, I had the opportunity to work with a team that functions in a public relations capacity, dealing with both the internal and external communication requirements of the agency. I learned just how important communication within the agency is in order to maximize productivity and even camaraderie among employees.
INDUSTRIAL DONUT: My senior year, I was able to connect with an outside client located very close to campus. Industrial Donut is a cute, quirky donut shop located in Savoy, Illinois. Our job was to increase their social media engagement while expanding their target audience to college students at the University of Illinois.
SOLUTION
THE BRAND TEAM: We created monthly newsletters for the agency as well as professional newsletters for alumni and possible recruiters. We also created blog posts that were posted on our website to update other agencies within AAF about our projects and clients. Finally, we assisted in the overall execution of the client teams' advertising campaigns and strategies and we kept track of our agency's progress.
INDUSTRIAL DONUT: Since Savoy is driving distance from campus, it was important to create incentives that would interest college-aged adults. To do so, we implemented multiple digital campaigns across Instagram and Facebook, as well as collaborated with other businesses on campus in order to bring the donuts to campus. We also connected with Greek Life and created Holiday campaigns in order to keep our audiences engaged.
EXECUTION
Example of Professional Newsletter with Client Updates from our Teams (1/2)
Example of Professional Newsletter with Client Updates from our Teams (2/2)
Boo Box Campaign Flyer
Thanksgiving Campaign Flyer
Sweet and Savory Collab Flyer
ACTIVATION
Through these executions, we did reach our goal of expanding Industrial Donut's target audience to college students. When assessing our progress, it was known that the traffic at the donut shop increased, more specifically with the holiday campaigns shown above. With our partnership with Cracked, a popular late-night food option for college students, the sweet-and-savory collaboration sold out completely a full two hours before close.
