Pitt wins marketing challenge

For the second year in a row, a class of Pitt marketing students took the top prize in a… For the second year in a row, a class of Pitt marketing students took the top prize in a national competition to design an advertising campaign geared toward college students.

Twenty-three students from the College of Business Administration won $5,000 for their “Shake it Up” campaign to promote the Honda Accord coupe.

The team members traveled to Honda headquarters in California immediately after their final exams in December and went head-to-head against two other finalists from the University of Illinois at Chicago and Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.

Senior Julie Abramovic, who headed up Pitt’s team, said the competition was stiff.

“They were all really good [presentations],” she said. “We all went about it in different ways.”

The backbone of the team’s campaign was the Pitt Crew, who showed up at locations around campus in two brand new Accords donning white Honda racing suits and helmets.

The team featured the Pitt Crew in its final presentation before a group of Honda executives and Abramovic said the evaluators were impressed by the team’s creativity and enthusiasm.

Abramovic said the “Shake it Up” campaign name was carefully chosen to reflect the goal of the project – to promote the new car among the college set.

“We focused on the totally redesigned car, and we were targeting Gen Y,” she said. “We figured their lives are changing, too, and they do things unconventionally.”

According to statistics compiled by the class, the campaign was a success.

The team’s survey of more than 900 Pitt undergrads and grad students showed that, after the campaign, students were 26 percent more familiar with and aware of the new car and 133 percent more likely to consider buying an Accord.