Have you every tried to organize a group of teenagers to create a cohesive ad campaign?  Here’s the story of how I barely survived it!

In this project, my team and I were tasked with creating a advertisement campaign to promote connection with nature based on our trip to Oregon (if you want to read more about my experiences in Oregon, go to INSERT BLOG).  For the campaign, we had to design one poster each as well as an additional marketing item.  Our team was required to create a video promotion as well as posters.  In regards to my additional marketing items, I created different forms of merchandise for example I made stickers, shirts, and tote bags.  Each form of merch has three different designs.  Here are some pictures of them.

Although I created all of the physical items, two designs were contributed by one of my team members.  Here are her designs.

The way that I created the stickers was by printing my designs out on specialty paper that has a sticking backing.  After printing them, I employed my team to cut them out while I cleaned up the edges (although I am thankful for their help, they need to improve on their cutting skills).  For the t-shirts and tote bags, I used the same method by printing my designs out onto an iron-on transfer paper and I created vinyl images onto my products.  As well as all of the merchandise I created, I also designed a pamphlet of walks in Oregon to hand out at the Spring Exhibition.

(here are is the pamphlet, if you are interested)

If you do not know, Spring Exhibition is a yearly public presentation of our work.  We have two exhibitions a year, one in winter, as well as, obviously, the one in spring.  For the exhibition, we are put in groups and we must create a project that we can display to our parents, teachers, and the general public.  The presentation must include an interactive segment to connect with the audience and snacks that we offer to the audience (I made brownies for this year’s exhibition — here’s the recipe https://www.blog44.ca/kieral/2024/06/23/a-blessing-in-the-form-of-a-brownie/). Each team also had to come up with costumes that were related to their category (I forgot to mention earlier that we each had categories for our advertisements such as adventure or community).  Unfortunately, last minute, one of our teammates went against our plan and willy nilly decided that we were all going to wear ivy (the ivy was plastic, itchy, and uncomfortable — remember I wore this against my will).  At this year’s Spring Exhibition, my team’s interactive element was a “nature walk” in which the exhibition goer has a cardboard cutout with a drawing of a vase and five holes.  At each station in our group’s area, there was a different flower for the station manager to gift to the audience member (all the flowers were ones that could be found in Oregon).  At the last station, members of the public could show their bouquet to the station manager to get a brownie.  We also handed out some of the smaller merch pieces such as the stickers and the pamphlets.  Our posters were displayed behind us on the wall for people to view.

If i were to do this project again, I would communicate better with my team members (to avoid the fiasco of receiving many low quality images of their posters – maybe they were screenshots?).  This lack of communication led to me printing out their posters regardless of the quality because I would not be returning to the place where I could print things. I would also make sure that our posters were a little more cohesive.  I also wish that we had more time to create our ads and products.  Sadly we only had eight days to create everything and this situation was out of our control.  But overall I really enjoyed working with my team members and am quite satisfied with the end result of our project.