Solent does the impossible

This year’s e-campaign in a day was an exciting but challenging experience. Students from courses such as PR and communication, marketing and advertising came together to try to ‘do the impossible’ by campaigning for a range of real-world problems that the professionals seem to have given up on.

In the morning, the groups were named and as students frantically tried to find group members, I had successfully found my small but welcoming team. We were made up of a first year PR student, two second year PR students and three advertising master students. I felt confident that we would all be able to bring different skills to the table.

Before long, we were sent away to our designated areas for the day and we were off campaigning to try to ‘do the impossible’. Group topics ranged from selling broccoli to children, promoting the benefits of ordinary tap water, and even getting people to shun the internet and return to high street shopping.

The task of my group was to ‘unite Britain’ and make us ‘whole’ again. It took some serious thinking, but we eventually all agreed on one thing: what does nearly every person love in Britain? Tea! Our whole campaign was purely based on uniting Britain through one of our most important national treasures - tea. We all loved the idea.

As the morning disappeared and our campaign became stronger we managed to get the chance to speak to Emma Leech, the President-elect of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) for 2018.

Throughout the day, she supported and advised the different groups, and she liked what she saw: “So far it has been a fascinating day with loads of fresh ideas and energy. I am massively impressed by the creativity and agility of the students - their ability to translate a brief professionally and comprehensively has been absolutely amazing.”

It was a fantastic opportunity being able to speak to Emma; she offered our team some great advice and motivated us to try and make our campaign really stand out.

As the afternoon came to an end, we all reconvened back where it had all started many hours ago. Everyone knew what was next, the part we all dreaded - the presentations. Despite our nerves, they were only five minutes long and all the teams presented some brilliant campaigns. It was amazing to see what had been achieved in just one day.

Although we weren’t the winning team, we did get a special mention from Emma Leech as she really loved the strategy behind our campaign. But we can’t forget the winning team, hats off to the Cat Callers who were campaigning to put an end to street harassment!

The event was organised by Rob Dalton, a lecturer in the School of Business, Law and Communications. He concluded the day by saying: “Students found the day challenging but great fun. The groups worked on a range of problems which those employed in the business have found to be impossible to resolve. Yet each of the groups managed to devise and implement a campaign that had a real impact on real people in real time.”

I look forward to the next PR event!