By Kaila Braley
This fall, an FSU marketing class Marketing Principles, continued a campaign begun last semester to promote attendance at men’s hockey and women’s basketball games, specifically focusing on the games played on Nov. 22.
The class last spring came up with the idea for this campaign, and set up a system with liaisons who would connect the class to the sports teams. This class began the preliminary planning for this campaign, which would be launched by the Marketing Principles class this fall.
Both classes used this campaign to practice hands-on marketing skills and gain experience.
Professor Randall Glickman asked a representative from Google to visit the class both semesters to talk about their project.
The hockey game had 398 attendees, according to the data recorded by the Athletic Department, which is an increase of over 200 people from the previous game.
The women’s basketball game, which “had to share the attendance with the phenomenal Men’s ECAC football game,” according to Glickman, “drew 230 in attendance.” This team’s previous game had 79 attendees.
The students in the class also worked on a fundraiser for the Special Olympics, and raised $580, according to Glickman. These funds were raised through a bake sale, raffle ticket sales and ticket sales for the games.
The Special Olympics website posted information about the two teams’ games and brought a child associated with the Special Olympics to sing the national anthem.
Glickman said the students decided to work on this “highly commendable” aspect of the campaign in an initial brainstorming exercise.
“Business is made up of people,” he said. “Making a profit is one aspect of an organization’s goal, [but] providing a better world by helping people in need makes for an organization that people want to be part of.”
On Oct. 14, the class was visited by representatives from Google who reviewed their campaign strategies and made suggestions.
Glickman said, “Google’s support of the class in this community effort is an example of an organization that supports this mission.”
The class was split into groups which implemented marketing techniques such as print advertising, search optimization and social media. The student presentations focused on carefully choosing keywords, creating ads for print and doing outreach via social media through making videos and sharing content.
Brian Cusack, Industry Director at Google, congratulated the students on their work and gave advice on how they could improve their project.
He spoke about the stages of creating a marketing campaign which include conceiving, building, executing, measuring and postmortem. Cusack gave advice on how to work on a successful campaign at each stage.
He, and the other representative from Google, then answered questions from the students.
Cusack said “Google is a culture” that “believes in giving back.” He said he was excited to work with the class.
Juan Franco, a sophomore business major in the class, said, “Google is one of the biggest companies in the world. You never get a type of experience like that.”
Phil Noel, a senior business major, said it was nerve-wracking to present in front of Google
representatives, but said, “we can do it.”
Franger Baez, a sophomore business major, said he wasn’t nervous about the presentation because “they’re just humans.”
Jalen Green, a sophomore business major, said the class brought fresh ideas to the project that was started by the previous marketing class last spring. He added their ideas were able to “piggy back” off of the work of last semester’s class.
Christina Pickett, a sophomore finance major, said she liked that they were able to “build off of that foundation.”
She added that she was excited that a representative from Google came to their class. “It’s friggin’ Google!”