News & Events

Four BU advertising students can be seen smiling down from a billboard on Bath Road in Bournemouth after presenting the winning pitch for a national advertising campaign.

Final year students of the BA (Hons) Advertising degree programme were invited to compete for a £1.5million campaign for VisitEngland. As a prize for winning the students got the chance to star in their own billboard advertisement.

Students received a live brief to create a campaign aimed at encouraging families to stay in England and to include cycling as part of their holiday activities. Final pitches were presented to VisitEngland, MediaCom, industry practitioners and tutors, who were looking for a credible, convincing solution to the brief.

The winning team were Totem advertising agency, made up of students, Victoria Sayer, Loren Hargreaves, Jennifer Gale and James Reeves. Based on the theme, ‘Escape the ordinary. Live the extraordinary’, Totem’s campaign impressed the judges with thorough research and a fully integrated communications plan.  Jennifer Gale, one of the team, spoke on behalf of her fellow students,

“We’ve been on quite a journey within the campaign planning experience and it’s been great to see the team grow throughout the whole process. We couldn’t be more pleased with the result and it’s amazing to know that all of those late nights paid off.”

“We were just happy to have answered a difficult brief with ideas that our lecturers and MediaCom liked as much as we did! It’s a really good feeling when it all seems to fall into place.”

The Campaign Planning unit of the BA (Hons) Advertising programme requires that students team up to form a professional advertising agency to complete assignments and leads up to tackling a real client brief under the banner, ‘A BIG, BOLD National advertising campaign’. This year the assignment was supported by VisitEngland tourism board and international media agency, MediaCom.

Course tutors at BU were also impressed with their students’ achievements. Melanie Gray, the unit leader for Campaign Planning, commented,

“Seeing the students respond to the challenge set by a real client brief was fantastic. The challenge by VisitEngland was complex and involved some real investigation and creative thinking by the students.”

“The students really embraced the opportunity and the quality of work produced by many of them was outstanding. Totem were worthy winners of the final pitch, receiving the highest grade for their campaign solution based on extremely well researched insight and some fantastic communication ideas.”