INLAND EMPIRE AD CLUB LEADS WAY IN EDUCATION
(SAN BERNARDINO, Calif.) Celebrating its 25th year, the Inland Empire Ad Club, with offices at 109 Church St. in Redlands, has appointed a new director of education to spearhead student involvement in the real world of advertising promotion. “We invited Micheal Swank from the Art Institute of California – Inland Empire to lead the club’s emphasis on education,” noted Theresa Mesa, the group’s 2007-08 president.
The Web designer and former Ad Club vice president says they want Swank to be a liaison to the schools in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, involving the students in founding their own ad clubs and participating in district and national advertising competitions.
“I’m excited,” says Swank. “I’ve been in education for a long time, and any way I can get kids actively involved in learning is my professional goal.” Swank, The Art Institute of California- Inland Empire’s Academic Director of Graphic Design & Interactive Media, is making plans to create student ad clubs at various area campuses. “That’s what I love about this new position – working with other schools and their students,” he says. “And I want to use the ad competitions to give kids the chance to see what the real world is like in their fields of interest, in this case advertising.”
Mesa explains, “There is a National Student Advertising Competition, sponsored this year by AOL. And when a winning team’s ad campaign proposal is chosen, it, or portions of it, will be utilized by AOL in its own ad programs.”
Students will learn how to understand markets, develop ad campaigns and execute those campaigns for each level of competition, this way learning what companies expect and need when it comes to promoting their products or services to the public.
But Swank has only one year as Ad Club Education Chairman to pull off his expectations for students before he’ll relinquish his position in mid 2008. “The students and I,” he says, “will be working our tails off. The students are loaded with graphic and advertising talent, and here’s a chance to test their creativity in real business situations.” As Theresa Mesa puts it, “Micheal will be developing the entire Inland Empire’s student ad programs and campus clubs.”
“Through the Ad Club’s education plan,” Swank says, “students will gain valuable exposure to what their careers may be like. And along the way, they’ll be making important contacts for their post-education futures in advertising.”
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