Advertising students at Charles Sturt University’s (CSU) School of Communication have won the 2006 International Advertising Association (IAA) Australia Chapter ‘Big Idea’ student advertising competition.

 

This is CSU’s third win in the four years of the national competition, and comes on the heels of three IAA international wins for CSU in the last six years (1999, 2002, 2005).

 

“This latest national award for our advertising students gives tremendous industry recognition to the CSU program,” said Mr Rod McCulloch, senior lecturer and Advertising course coordinator in the School of Communication at the Bathurst Campus.

 

“The University entered two six-member teams – Kajulu Blue and Kajulu Red – from CSU’s student advertising agency, Kajulu Communications. They competed against a total of 18 teams from universities around Australia and we are proud to say that Kajulu Blue won,” Mr McCulloch said.

 

The win, announced last week, demonstrates the value of CSU students working in the industry-professional environment of Kajulu Communications. “Everything we teach and everything our students learn is focused on ensuring that they hit the ground running. We have a simple philosophy: ‘When you leave CSU and Kajulu you are more than graduating. You are leaving one agency and moving on to another’,”’ Mr McCulloch said.

 

Each year the IAA Australia Chapter provides university student advertising teams the opportunity to compete in a national competition with a brief to develop an integrated marketing communications campaign for a not-for-profit organisation. This year (2006) the client was the Royal Flying Doctor Service and the brief required the development of a campaign with a strong community involvement focus and an objective of increasing RFDS membership. The competition was judged by a panel consisting of industry professionals, academics and representatives of the client organisation.

 

The winning Kajulu Blue entry focused on the vast distances that the Royal Flying Doctor Service travels annually and featured the high profile Australian actress Deborah Mailman.

 

Judges for this year’s ‘Big Idea’ competition said the entries were “Outstanding…showing a huge amount of work and initiative…The future of the advertising / communications industry is in good hands.”

 

The members of the winning Kajulu Blue team are Allison Sims (Team Leader), Holly Whiteley, Kat Silver, Lucy Lugton, Amanda Clack and Elizabeth Cameron. “We are taught to work as an agency. Our roles and responsibilities in Kajulu sees us work as a team - from developing strategies through to the final production - so we have the same challenges we would have working in the industry,” said team leader Allison Sims.