By Brian Craddock
Three Algonquin students in the advertising and marketing program presented their idea for an advertising campaign at a recent Ottawa Public Library board meeting.
At the meeting, chaired by city Councillor Jan Harder, Brennon Stephenson, Jenna Gadbois and Patrick Norton, three second-year students in the agency section of the advertising program presented their multi-part campaign to get more people reading and to help more people realize that the Ottawa Public Library isn’t just full of “musty and dusty books.” But that it actually is a modern establishment with free wi-fi and the ability to access every book at every branch via ebooks.
The multi-part campaign, created last semester by Stephenson, Gadbois and Norton was the culmination of seven weeks of hard work. The campaign includes three poster sized ads intended for the sides of the numerous buses and bus shelters and a Pinterest account to advertise the numerous books of various types available at the library. The campaign also included a promotional Twitter hashtag #ChillOnTheHill, and advertising for a promotional event of the same name, on Parliament Hill.
These kinds of projects are pretty common for the advertising students. In their first semester of their second year, two or three clients communicate to the college that they would like to work with the Advertising program on a project such as this.
“Typically, [but not exclusively] clients come and find us.” The head of the agency section of the Advertising program, Jake Volt said.
This particular project started half way through last semester, after an initial correspondance, when Amelita Armit, a trustee on the Ottawa Public Library approached the advertising department, and then Volt, who explained to HER how the program at Algonquin works, and trustee Armit decided that the library would like to work with the college.
The 15 students then broke up into three groups of five and competed to find the best campaign, as decided by the board of trustees.