866-266-7496 mediacommons@psu.edu

Case Study: MKTG 327

Retail Advertising Project

In MKTG 327, students were asked to run their own retail sales businesses, including promotion of those stores. For their promotion decisions, students were challenged to consider what elements of the promotion mix they wanted to use to promote their business. As part of the advertising and promotion, each group was required to develop an audio or video advertisement for their retail store.

Project in Brief

Course: MKTG 327
Instructor: Mary Beth Pinto
Number of Students: 42
Semester: Fall 2011
Duration of Assignment: 6 weeks

Key Benefits

Students were able to apply real-life marketing skills learned during a simulated experience by becoming the retail management team that made a variety of decisions about the store’s operations including the amount of advertising and sales promotion expenditures. They called upon these skills in the creation of their advertisements.

Application to Other Courses

Marketing majors were given an opportunity to develop ads that were custom-tailored to the businesses they had been maintaining daily operations for, giving them a view of both client needs and production constraints. These insights will be carried forward as students continue through the Marketing program.

Project Description for Students

You are challenged to consider what elements of the promotion mix you want to use to promote your business. As part of the advertising and promotion, each group is required to develop an audio or video advertisement for their retail store. Media Commons will provide a one hour tutorial on how to use the multi-media equipment and software to develop your commercials.

Videos should uploaded to YouTube and three individuals will judge the commercials: the Course Instructor, course Instructional Designer, and the manager of Marketing Communications for our campus.

Your video should be developed in these steps:

  1. Choose elements of the promotion mix to promote the business
  2. Plan an ad that meets the requirements of the business
  3. Record the ad as audio or video
  4. Edit the rough cut of the advertisement into a finished product
  5. Upload the commercial to YouTube to be evaluated

For the video portion, students:

  • Assess the promotion needs of their simulated retail businesses
  • Plan appropriate and engaging ad campaigns
  • Receive Media Commons training on crafting digital stories, working with audio and video equipment and editing using GarageBand or iMovie software
  • Identify appropriate media tools and techniques for their proposed campaigns
  • Record, edit and publish commercials to YouTube for evaluation
Grading Process

The final project is worth approximately 8% of the course grade. Students have six weeks to complete their assignments.

Projects were evaluated based on the following criteria:

  • Consistent with retail mix
  • Easily identify who is the target market (primary audience)
  • Clear message
  • Grabs attention and interest
  • Memorable
  • Creative
  • Could see this commercial as an “actual” retail store commercial
  • Meets 90 second time limit

Download the Rubric

Technology

  • iMovie
  • Video camera
  • GarageBand

Skills

  • Creating promotion plans
  • Applying marketing concepts
  • Working with clients
  • Conveying information in multimedia
  • Writing and presenting

Target Skills

  • Storytelling
  • Writing

(Instructor’s) Lessons Learned

“This project gives student the concept of a ‘live laboratory’ to apply retail concepts and theory by working within the confines of a retail management team.”