Pitt students help market Volt

Mayor Luke Ravenstahl left his office yesterday to drive a silver 2011 Chevrolet Volt electric… Mayor Luke Ravenstahl left his office yesterday to drive a silver 2011 Chevrolet Volt electric car around a three-mile loop starting at Heinz Field.

Ravenstahl was not leisurely touring Downtown. Instead he was testing Chevrolet’s newest model at Pitt’s “ProsInMotion Ride and Drive,” one of the final marketing events put on by a team of business students as part of its “Take Charge” campaign.

Chevrolet gave students in professor Bob Gilbert’s Projects in Marketing Class — a class hand-selected by Gilbert through applications — a $3,000 budget and the exclusive opportunity to work with the Volt, which will not be available to Pennsylvania consumers until August. Pitt received the honor because of students’ past success in marketing contests.

Last semester the ProsInMotion team competed against 23 universities and won first place in Chevrolet’s national competition to build the best marketing campaign aimed at Generation Y.

Pitt senior Laura Watts, the group’s agency coordinator, said the class faces a new challenge this semester because it needs to appeal to both students and the target market — the older, higher income generation that can afford the car with a starting price of a litte over $32,000.

“We have to move off campus to the people with buying power,” Watts said.

Aside from yesterday’s Ride and Drive event, the team has hosted Take Charge events at Pitt’s School of Medicine, Benedum Hall and the Katz Graduate School of Business to reach out to its target market.

Senior Zak Prauer, the group’s public relations representative, said the marketing team hopes to send a message to “take charge of the future, take charge of being responsible about [consumers’] purchase decisions and hopefully encourage a movement towards people engaging in eco-friendly behavior.”

Watts said the campaign’s main goal is to raise awareness of the Chevrolet brand and the Volt in the automobile market. So far ProsInMotion has had five people place orders for the Chevrolet Volt.

“We should be working on getting commission,” Watts joked.

Pitt undergrads got a taste of the vehicle on Tuesday. The campaign team, dressed in neon yellow shirts, attracted students to the silver Volt parked in the Schenley Quad with music, free food and a raffle offering giveaways such as a Keurig coffemaker and an iHome clock-radio.

The team’s mascot, “the Voltman” — a play off the Green Man from the popular show “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” — pranced around the Quad in a green body suit painted with a lightening bolt emblem, posing for pictures with students.

Prauer said the team hoped to get students directly interacting with the vehicle.

Sophomore Jasmine Smith stopped by the quad to slide into the black leather backseat of the Volt and immediately squealed.

“Oh wow this is so awesome,” she said. “I love it, can I take it home?”

Other students shared similar reactions to the Volt’s large touch screen navigation system, which displays the car’s battery life as well as a meter that rates the driver’s driving efficiency.

Prauer said the Chevrolet Volt is unique in that it runs on electricity and gas. The Volt gets 30 to 35 miles with electric charge and then an onboard gas generator kicks in to power the electric engine. Once the gas generator powers up, the car gets about 37 miles per gallon.

The car can be plugged into an average three-prong outlet and Prauer said it costs about $1.50 to charge a day.

Christine Salvador, Chevrolet’s district manager of the Pittsburgh region, said Chevrolet’s goal in appearing on campuses is to create excitement and awareness of its brand with young people heading out into the work force.

EdVenture Partners, a local marketing education consultancy, first connected Pitt students to Chevrolet. Tom Cronin, EdVenture Partner’s account manager, said the program aims to provide marketing students with real-world experience.

“We are the intermediaries,” he said. “We connect campaigns to universities [and] provide students with hands-on learning.”

Gilbert said that Chevrolet and other corporations that have worked with ProsInMotion are not only happy to give students opportunities — they have their own motives as well.

“They know that Generation Y is very difficult to reach using normal marketing techniques,” he said. “So they get Generation Y themselves to reach out to Generation Y.”

To reach the student generation and promote the Volt, ProsInMotion developed a blog and a Facebook page, as well as Twitter and YouTube accounts.

Gilbert highlighted the marketing experience students gain in his class. In the past, ProsInMotion has worked with the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Recording Association of America, Honda and the Central Intelligence Agency.

“They get an unbelievable chance to run and operate their own agency,” he said. “They get an ability to feature this on their resume — an opportunity that differentiates themselves against people they are competing with for jobs.”

The team is organized into a full-service marketing communications agency. Gilbert splits the team into four departments: research, campaign strategy, public relations and advertising. One person serves as agency coordinator.

Prauer estimates he probably put 20 to 25 hours a week into the campaign.

“It’s a pretty big commitment,” he said. “Most of us are graduating in a year, and this is the highlight of our marketing career at Pitt.”

ProsInMotion hopes to have a Chevrolet Volt or Equinox at Pitt’s Relay For Life on Friday.