The TV show “The Apprentice” comes to mind when students in Deb Pierce’s capstone journalism course describe their semester.
Twenty-five seniors in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication had signed up to apply everything they’d learned, over four years of classes and internships, to an actual client.
But nothing could have fully prepared them for the frenetic pace and ever-changing demands of a startup company going live with its product line.
Company logos changing mid-stream. Price points up in the air. Demographics touted one day, flouted the next. Whatever unexpected challenges arose for the young company, the students grappled with them as well.
“It’s a lot of stress,” says senior Randy Cunningham. “Normally, a classroom campaign would be fairly theoretical, with really nothing off limits. But with this client, everything is in the context of their business.”
The class split into four teams — account, media, public relations, and creative — each responsible for different parts of the whole strategy.
“It was a trial by fire,” says Pierce. “No journalism class has ever helped a startup business take a product to market before.”
On May 10, the class, functioning as a strategic communications agency, will present a fully-integrated media campaign to Jay Sapovits, the CEO of Cirrus Fitness, and Scott Roskind, CMO. UW-Madison alums Kenny Dichter (BA‘90, Sociology) and Shoshana Dichter (BA’92, Journalism) are owners of Cirrus Fitness, which sells licensed workout equipment, ranging from stationary bikes to smaller items such as yoga mats and medicine balls.
The effort will be the culmination of a year’s worth of market research, creative brainstorming, and strategic planning, led by students, closely supervised by Pierce, and mentored by Sapovits, who has been available as a sounding board since last September. That’s when many of these students first started on the project through Pierce’s market research class, J449.
The company wanted secondary research on the licensing and fitness industries, as well as primary research on the potential customer base. Pierce’s fall class interviewed fitness experts, held focus groups, and attended an alumni tailgate to find out what Badger pride meant to the mysterious group of consumers known as ‘35 and older.’
The research was then turned over to students in the spring capstone to create the integrated communications campaign for Cirrus.
“It was one of my favorite classes at UW,” says Laura Howe, who took the market research course and is now leading the account team for the capstone agency. “I can speak for all of us when I say it’s something we found invaluable.”
Pierce, a faculty associate, set up the partnership after a suggestion from School of Journalism and Mass Communication Board of Visitors members Pete Marino and Shoshanna Dichter, both of whom had heard about her capstone course. Pierce began partnering with real Wisconsin clients in 2011, after receiving an “Education of the Future” grant from the Provost’s Office. The grant was intended to make the classroom experience more forward-looking and outcome-based, reflecting the “socially-constructed education possible in the ‘Google World.’”
But this was the first time that students’ work would play such a vital and immediate role.
Working together in small groups was easy — students were used to that. The hard part: integrating each team’s contribution into a seamless strategy that met the client’s goals.
“This is an extremely talented group,” says Pierce. “But they were hitting some rough spots a few weeks ago with the peer-to-peer feedback process. They had to learn how to listen and act, while not taking it personally. Then, too, they had tough, tell-it-like-it-is feedback from the real client. This experience exposed them early to a style that is no-nonsense, not hand holding.”
By the time the students make their final presentation to their client on May 10, they’ll have experienced hard deadlines, team-level planning, and the full range of roles and responsibilities of agency members and managers. They’ll have the client relations skills that employers crave, but very few graduating seniors possess.
Pierce says that regardless of how the campaign goes over, students learned that the best campaigns are completely integrated, with full communication between all agency units. And the client is already happy.
“The students, and Deb Pierce, are rock stars,” says CEO Sapovits. “Their willingness to challenge themselves, challenge me and be challenged showed maturity and professionalism beyond their years. Their efforts on behalf of Cirrus will have impact throughout every phase of our growth.”