Class Project

So, it’s the close of the Fall 2007 semester.And the Advertising and Public Relations Campaign class had as its objective the re-branding of an international,multi cultural Art Center. Sounds motivating?
The following was stated on the course syllabus “When you enrolled in this course, you were hired to develop an advertising and public relations campaign.
The entire class will work as one agency. You and your fellow workers will develop this campaign. You will employ theory and techniques learned in your advertising and public relations course work.”
Professor Susan Katz’s Advertising and Public Relations Campaign class is helping rebrand the Black Rock Art Center (BRAC) in Bridgeport, CT, and is redesigning many pieces of media collateral in the process.
BRAC is a 5013C non-profit organization devoted to offering an internationally diverse palate of cultural programs, events and activities. These programs include Summer Institute, KPA on Tour, Sounds of the World, Summer Sounds of the World and the Artist-In-Residence Program.
When the semester began, the students were divided into departments– Website Creation, Annual Fundraiser, Art, Promotional Video and Photography.
“Before we can start, we need to determine the goals and objectives of our client.then produce outstanding professional media collateral that works, sells and really speaks to the targeted demographic of the Center’s audience,” explained Professor Katz.
Though BRAC has presence online with its own URL, the Website Creation Department found itself producing an entirely new and different site and testing it at a temporary web location.
“There are many things involved in creating a website for the Black Rock Art Center. First we had to attract the demographic BRAC wants and create space that speaks to this audience and compliments them. Taking all that information into consideration, we developed a site map by deciding what information people would like to receive from the site. After we knew what pages were going into the site we came up with a look and feel and began page development
in Dreamweaver. We’ll be adding in elements like slide shows and webisodes,” said Web Department Project Manager Zachary Smith.
The Annual Campaign department produced billboards, newspaper ads (some ads will be in Spanish), an email letter, brochure, window signage and fund raising ideas (concept documents).
“The Annual Campaign is a campaign that is run once a year. Its goal is to bring money into the organization through raising awareness of the BRAC, reaching out to the community and gathering donations from private and public sources. It is a very important part of the BRAC’s PR and Advertising as it is a non-profit organization and should collect a lot of funding through their Annual Campaign,” said Annual Campaign Project Manager Maryanne Stafford
“I worked on the event logos; Blues Festival, Jazz Fest and Black History Month. I tried to blend my ideas with their existing strategy, so everything would be cohesive,” said Hernan Restrepo of the art department.
The Art Department melded the existing logo and slogan into one piece art and then brought the theme to life on T-shirts and creation of 4X4 stickers that BRAC could use as street marketing approve-graffiti.
“We had difficulties due to many different creative differences. The Art Department decided to keep the BRAC logo the same but the exterior of the building is being redesigned,” said Dave Valle the Project Manager for Art Department.
The Media Kit is made up of fact sheets, background/history sheet and feature stories. Janelle Kardell, the Project Manager of the Media Kit, along with Angelica Lawrence, stated, “The Media Kit will include all art created (flyers, logos, ads), website additions and all written documents.
I will include a CD with all the files so that the client can easily use them in the future.”When it came to the Promotional Video, it was decided that Webisodes would be produced. These are generally short (20 seconds to three minutes and more) videos available for online viewing. “Professor Katz and I concurred that webisodes would really contribute to giving BRAC a hipper look,” said Video Project Manager Chris O’Neill.
“There will be six webisodes; an interview with BRAC Founder Joe Celli, four pieces featuring past Center performing artists and a webisode highlighting the BRAC campaign “experience” and starring
Professor Katz class,” added Chris O’Neill
The Photography Department has produced
photos which are being manipulated to create the interior and exterior
building schematics. Additionally “we are producing three slide shows for website viewing which features the events, culture and people of BRAC,” said Project Manager for Photography Lisa Dickal.
This type of class offers students a uniques and real-world hands-on experience
that enhances their communication
portfolios with professional quality work.
“Many students in my past classes have written me to commend the way the course is executed,” said Professor Katz. “They told me it gave them the experience they needed to get work in the media industry.”
“Yes, real world is what this class was about,” added O’Neill. “It’s what every media student needs.” The unique experience
of this class is that students are able to work one-on-one, face-to-face with the client where they can assess the client objectives and needs first hand, execute the work and set continuous feed back first hand.”
“This was a good cohabitation with ideas with-in this project,” said Blake Burns, a Mass Communication student.