Marketing students host CARnival

A semester’s worth of efforts by marketing students culminated in an event on Thursday featuring red balloons, cotton candy, backflips and a 2014 Mazda 3.

Rose Choi, a student in the Projects in Marketing class that organized the event, said that more than 1,500 students had already stopped by the William Pitt Union patio by noon to play games and look at the car on display. She estimated that about 5,000 people would attend the event, which lasted from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Choi is one of 22 seniors in the class, in which students spend a semester creating a marketing campaign. This year, the students created a fake marketing agency that represents Mazda. The purpose of the assignment was to generate awareness for the company and the 2014 Mazda 3, which will debut in January.

Choi was the campaign strategy director for this agency and led her classmates in organizing the CARnival.

“We are so lucky to have Mazda,” Choi said. “We have been working on this event since August, and I think it went really well.”

Anne Bohlander, Choi’s classmate and director of public relations for the fake agency, said she is proud of how the team put the event together.

“We’re representing Pitt and we want to do it proudly,” Bohlander said. “It’s awesome to see your work in action like this.”

One popular activity at the event was the “Who Wants to be a Mazda-aire” challenge. Participants had to answer five questions about the company and the new 2014 Mazda 3 on display near the patio.

After every correct answer, contestants could put their names into a raffle for $50 gift cards redeemable for purchases from companies including Amazon and the Cheesecake Factory.

“We even have Steelers tickets to a game in December,” Bohlander added. “And if you get all five questions right, you get a free T-shirt.”

Next to the game show event, members of the Panther Parkour Club were doing backflips on the patio. Parkour club member Kofi Osei, a junior, said it is good exposure for his club, but he mainly came for the action.

“I just like doing flips, and [the marketing students] said come do flips, so I came,” Osei said.

EdVenture Partners, a company that organizes events where students can get hands-on experience in marketing based out of Orinda, Calif., worked as the liaison between the marketing students and Mazda.

Lexie Fatianow, an account manager for EdVenture Partners, said she was happy because the student team successfully integrated the new Mazda car into their event.

“The turnout was definitely better than I expected, given the weather,” Fatianow said. “The students had a very cohesive campaign and covered the key aspects, like having food and booths set up.”

Bohlander said the CARnival is the biggest of several marketing events the group facilitated throughout the semester. The first event, called “Capture Your Drive,” took place during Family Weekend in October.

Since the CARnival was the most prominent event of the semester, Bohlander said the team tried to generate as much buzz for it as possible.

“You have probably seen the words ‘what drives you’ written in chalk around campus,” she said. “We just wanted to make as much buzz as we could.”

Senior Philip Sambar said he heard about the event from his advertising professor, who offered extra credit to all students who attended.

“The music and energy and big crowd of people also drew me in,” he said. “It made me more aware and conscious of the brand, to be more interested than I was before.”