The industry experts in attendance where Maro Swanepoel (Advertising Account Manager at Die Burger), Senzo Zulu (Art Director at BoomTown), Brett Gieseke (Graphic Designer at Hybrid Designs), and Anton van Rooyen (Representative from Retina South Africa). The academic staff in attendance were Prof Tait, Prof Radder, Ms Ferreira, and Dr van Eyk.
The advertising campaign forms part of the student’s course work for the module, Advertising & Sales Promotion. Lecturer for the module, Mr Andrew Marriott, earlier in the year tasked the students with forming into 4 fully functional advertising agencies, complete with agency identity. “Students are thereby able to role play the various departments found in most advertising agencies”, says Mr Marriott.
But the formation of the advertising agency is only the beginning, shortly thereafter the agencies are brief as to developing a real-world advertising campaign for a chosen non-profit organisation. The chosen NPO was Retina South Africa.
For 30 years Retina SA has endeavored to restore the wonderful gift of sight to children and adults living with Genetic Retinal Eye Conditions through pursuing ground breaking developments in modern day medical science. Additionally, Retina SA provides invaluable information, knowledge, know-how and support to thousands of people, to maximise and preserve existing vision and help live fruitful and productive lives.
This year the advertising campaign the students were tasked with was entitled, “Shades Day”. “Shades Day” was conceptualised by Mr Marriott and revolves around a person buying a Retina SA Shades Day sticker and then wearing the sticker and a pair of sunglasses to their work/school/organization. The organisation will have flexibility in deciding the specific date (ideally between 14 and 20 October, World Retina Week) when they will be hosting a Shades Day at their specific organisation.
It was at this advertising campaign concept developed by that of the “Halcyon” advertising agency that was voted as being the best out of all four groups. The group was awarded with the “Die Burger – Best Concept” trophy for their efforts.
The advertising campaign is far from over as now the print advert concepts developed by the groups will collectively be refined with the assistance of Senzo and others from BoomTown in order to roll the campaign out at key schools and businesses. This pilot run will test the student’s sales promotional skills as they will amongst other things have to identify willing organisations to participate in the campaign.
Above (from left to right): THE JUDGES - Maro Swanepoel (Advertising Account Manager at Die Burger), Senzo Zulu (Art Director at BoomTown), Brett Gieseke (Graphic Designer at Hybrid Designs), Anton van Rooyen (Representative from Retina South Africa), and Prof Madele Tait and Mr Andrew Marriott (Dept. Marketing Management)
Above: THE WINNING TEAM - Winning advertising group, Halcyon, with Maro Swanepoel (centre) awarding Die Burger trophy for "Best concept"