While the University of Virginia was celebrating victories on the baseball field, a small team of students was cleaning up in another contest - beating more than 150 other schools with a campaign to sell Snapple.
Each year, the American Advertising Federation hosts a contest for college kids. This year’s mission: create a marketing campaign for Snapple. Students Hagan Rushton of Charlottesville, Doug Tusing of McClean and 26 others had an idea.
“We had this hypothesis that drinking a Snapple was a bright spot in consumers’ days - like finding a $20 bill in your pocket or catching all the green lights on your way to work, popping bubble wrap or catching an M&M in your mouth. Throwing trash and making it from a distance, or peeling a clementine in one piece, having your alarm go off early and then you get to sleep extra.”
Using face scanning technology, the group was able to document that drinking Snapple produced a sense of delight - just like those other things did. They credited four aspects of the product.
“Through our research we found that it was a combination of the iconic glass bottle, the pop of the cap, the wide variety of fruity flavors and the quirky real fact under the lid that collectively made Snapple a little bright spot in consumers’ days.”
The class spent a semester doing more than 4,000 surveys, 430 interviews, 24 hours of in-store observation and 15 focus groups. They documented that competing products did not produce that spark of joy. They came up with a slogan: "That’s the stuff!"
During the second semester, Professor Carrie Heilman created a small advertising agency, assigning students to work in different parts of the enterprise, producing ads for the Internet, radio and TV.
“Stay tuned for scenes from the next episode. We’ll return after these messages.”
“The commercial opens up on our actor sitting on a couch, and his show ends, and the commercials come on. He leaps up and gets all sorts of crazy things done during this commercial break, and he finally makes it back to the couch, and the voiceover comes in and says, ‘Making it back to the couch just as the commercials end.’”
In addition to showing their ad, students sold their ideas to the judges with a written campaign proposal and a 20-minute presentation at regional and national events. The team took top honors, winning a prize of $5,000 - seed money for next year’s class. Tusing figures Snapple got a very good deal.
“One hundred fifty-eight universities compete, and all of that content is now the intellectual property of Snapple. It is coming from students, but we are the future.”
And while students didn’t get the money, they did get a trip to Disneyland to collect their prize. What’s more, the experience of doing and the glory of winning carried them to other exciting places. Rushton spent her summer in New York as one of 18 admitted to Ogilvy and Mather’s prestigious associates program in advertising, while Tusing got a summer job producing a commercial that promotes travel and investment in Virginia.
