Marketing students win national recognition

Students, who grew up with blogs and pop-up web ads, have their own ideas about how to cut through the barrage of direct ads, print ploys, TV commercials and in-your-face web ads to get a message out.

A team from Prof. Meryl P. Gardner’s introduction to marketing class designed a campaign for the Mazda Protégé 5 that won national accolades. Their plan to push the small coupe-SUV hybrid was named a semifinalist in the 2003 Leonard J. Raymond Collegiate Echo Competition.

Charged with coming up with a campaign that would attract educated males straddling adolescence and adult responsibility, the team designed a campaign around the slogan, “What’s your speed?” The pictures showed Protégé 5 drivers segueing from student to active single to young family man.

Candace Dupre, a senior majoring in finance from Newark, said Gardner’s class was her first marketing class, but the competition definitely made her more interested in marketing.

She said she felt as if her boss had handed her project and said, “Here, see what you can do with this.”

“I enjoyed creating something that might actually be used by a large corporation like Mazda,’’ Dupre said.

Thomas Godwin, a senior accounting major from Wilmington, said, “It was more real-world than anything else I’ve ever done in school. It gave me a glimpse into what people do out in the real world as opposed to in a classroom environment.’’

For Veronica Robbins, a senior consumer economics major from , the best part was researching how the Protégé compared to other real cars.

Alison Bernick, a senior consumer science major from Wilmington, said the project gave her an in-depth understanding of what she learned in class.

“We applied everything we learned in class. I think that was one of our strong points – we were able to take the textbook marketing concepts and use them creatively.’’

Candice DuPre (left), BE ’04, and Meryl Gardner, associate professor of business administration
Photo by Kathy F. Atkinson

Gardner said her students were eager to work with a real product and use real marketing information supplied by a real corporate client.

“The project showed the students that they can do more than they thought they could,’’ she said. “Because this was an introductory level course, some students wondered whether they would be able to address a real world situation for a currently marketed product for a major company. They learned that they could do the job, exceed their client’s expectations and compete favorably with students from around the world.’’

John A. Reed Jr., BSBU ’69, director of major accounts marketing for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Delaware and a classroom volunteer, said he was wowed by the students’ ability to use electronic research and Internet input in their marketing plans.

“Once you …look at the substance of their work, it’s just absolutely exceptional.… They’ve learned to take stuff off the Internet and combine it in their PowerPoint presentations with all the bells and whistles. But, more than that, they are able to complete their research because they know how to search and maneuver and use the web,’’
Reed said.

The team, which did not advance to the final round, was one of 34 teams chosen as semi-finalists from a field of 231 teams from 40 colleges.

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