The GEN Campaign was done as a project for the capstone advertising course at Texas Tech, Advertising Campaigns. Our professor brought in a real client and we competed in groups, or agencies, to produce the best campaign. Ultimately, it was up to us to deliver the best campaign possible and to the client to use what they needed to ensure their success. As a result of this project, I was asked by the director to help him with a few other projects.

At that time, the Texas Tech University Office of Research and Commercialization was in its second year with a program then called the TECHCELERATOR, a technology accelerator (surprise) that gave aspiring entrepreneurs the opportunity to work with a project and real investors from ideation to production and presentation for a step into the business world. Their problem was a lack of awareness. The TTUORC needed more applicants (resulting in more funding). That's where we stepped in.

Starting with research, I distributed and interpreted several hundred surveys to confirm that no one had ever heard of the TECHCELERATOR and to figure out who would even be interested. I broke that target down into three sections based on what they would want to get from the program and why they might not participate. These targets reflect all potential groups (students and professionals) to which the program is available.

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Research

While administering surveys, I also conducted secondary research into when to rebrand and how to introduce it. With no real current recognition and potential legal issues (various other programs with similar names), the TTUORC was in a perfect position to rebrand. This became our primary mission for our agency: we set out to create a new name, look, and personality that would be more reflective of the people it hoped to reach.

To that end, I came up with the idea of GEN. GEN is versatile and, through our campaign, easy to interact with and expand upon. It also subtly references the cotton gin which was a revolutionary technology for the South. In terms of color, I selected green and yellow for their complete separation from Texas Tech (whose colors are red and black). Part of what the TTUORC hoped to do was to separate the program from Texas Tech and eventually to expand past West Texas. While red and black is a great color scheme, and could do well independently outside of West Texas, anything in the immediate area in red and black would reference back to Texas Tech, offering their brand no true independence. Green and yellow forced that separation. However, to allow for an unconscious connection, the campaign's visual style does reflect the same feel as the rest of Texas Tech's advertising. We were able to match the style without the assumption of a Texas Tech backing because of the radically different color scheme.

Marketing

As we redefined the brand, we developed a new website and social media handles and personality profiles mimicking BuzzFeed quizzes to encourage interest and interaction with GEN.

`The main theme of our ads was that "GEN" is part of many words and can work for the participants.

Not to forget our roots on the college campus, we made several promotional items to hand out at campus events and informational sessions, including a t-shirt (polo for workers), re-useable cup, pens, and two different USB drives. Each of these is something of importance to college students or professionals and each can be easily integrated into daily life, promoting brand recognition.

Results

For the client presentation, we had a copy of the book professionally printed for each advisor and our professor for them to review as well as a verbal presentation complete with props and a slideshow. After all was said and done, our group out on top! The TTUORC liked our campaign the best and planned to integrate a lot of our ideas with their own.