A Charles Sturt University (CSU) team has just been confirmed as the 2008 Asia-Pacific champions of a global competition for advertising students.

 

The CSU School of Communication student advertising team, Kajulu Communications, is now one of five international university team finalists for the World Championship title in the International Advertising Association (IAA) InterAd XII Global Advertising Competition.

 

The Vice-Chancellor and President of CSU, Professor Ian Goulter, congratulated the students and their teachers, and praised their dedication and creativity. “Whether they become the IAA World Champions or not, this is a world championship team and demonstrates CSU’s commitment to providing education and training to an international standard to enable our graduates to work and succeed globally,” Professor Goulter said.

 

Associate Professor Rod McCulloch, Head of the CSU School of Communication and advertising course coordinator, explained “We enter one team of seven students, who are selected from our final year students to be a member of the InterAd team. They compete to be on the team, which then creates the campaign under my guidance.

 

“Our advertising students see being in Kajulu Communications and representing the University in the InterAd competition as the pinnacle of their achievements at CSU.

 

“What makes this win so gratifying is the effort this team put into their campaign entry. Because of the timing of the IAA World Advertising Congress in Washington DC in April 2008, and the desire by the IAA to have the winning team present their campaign at this event, the competition was moved forward to start in early November last year.

 

“While this timing suits northern hemisphere universities, it certainly disadvantages us in the southern hemisphere as it is outside our university teaching year. The team unanimously agreed to enter, knowing that they would be working on InterAd on top of their 2007 university subject load, and would have to work through their Christmas holidays to meet the February deadline, which they did.”

 

Each year the IAA, based in New York, USA, chooses an international product, brand or service for all competing university teams to work on. This year the client for the competition campaign was LYNX, a range of men’s grooming products. In-depth research and market investigation is essential to be able to produce a campaign appropriate to their country. The campaign included a communications budget and projected return on investment.