The only complaint Furman art department chair Ross McClain has with his excellent students is that they\u2019re such excellent students.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve been taking tests and they\u2019ve been jumping those hurdles, and they finally get here and art\u2019s been beaten out of them for so long,\u201d he said recently from his office in the Roe Art Building. \u201cThey\u2019re really kind of boring. They haven\u2019t had the opportunity to fail and have it be OK to fail and say, \u2018hey, what did we learn from that?\u2019 I tell them, you\u2019re all going to fail in my class, but we\u2019re going to teach you to rapidly innovate and fail and learn from it and then do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Enter CreateAthon. No money, no grades, no credits\u2014and only 24 hours for student volunteers to develop, design and implement a marketing campaign for a local non-profit. Plenty of chances to fail\u2014and plenty to learn.<\/p>\n
CreateAthon<\/a> got its start in 1998 when Cathy Monetti and Teresa Coles of Riggs Partners<\/a> in Columbia, S.C., came up with the idea to offer pro bono marketing services to nonprofits in the area during a 24-hour \u201ccreative marathon.\u201d CreateAthon executive director Peyton Rowe, who is also an associate professor at Virginia Commonwealth, expanded the program into academic circles, and when McClain heard about it he quickly realized it would be a perfect way to take Furman students away from tests and put them in a real-world pressure situation.<\/p>\n A campus-wide e-mail resulted in more than 30 volunteers, and in Russell Smith, McClain\u2019s friend and former president\/CEO of Make A Wish South Carolina, they had a client.<\/p>\n \u201cHe wanted a kind of preventative approach to domestic abuse and domestic violence, child abuse,\u201d Anna Riethman, a junior studio art major with a graphic design focus, said. \u201cTheir old branding was \u2018Kids, You Can\u2019t Beat \u2019Em,\u2019 and he was a little bit attached to that at first, but he also said \u2018I trust you guys to do what you want. Surprise me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n That they did. The students emerged on the morning of Feb. 28 with a Web site, a logo and a marketing campaign \u2013 including press release kits, newsletters, advertising and PR strategies\u2014wrapped around the slogan \u201cFight the Bull.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea is each person has their own bull that can be an insecurity that\u2019s personal, it can be an outer conflict. It can definitely include domestic violence and abuse, but it\u2019s not limited to that,\u201d Riethman, a native of Kalamazoo, Mich., said. \u201cIt\u2019s really just any negativity or disrespect to other human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the promotional materials is a T-shirt featuring a bull\u2019s head made up of a colorful word for bull excrement written in multiple languages. The idea, Riethman says, was to \u201cbeat high school kids to the punch\u201d while getting them on board with the message. \u201cThat shirt was my baby. I worked on that shirt for four hours nonstop.\u201d<\/p>\n Smith couldn\u2019t have been more pleased.<\/p>\n \u201cI was a little bit shocked, but not in a bad way. It was a little bit edgy, and I think that\u2019s what it\u2019s going to take to get everybody\u2019s attention,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it doesn\u2019t have a shock factor. It doesn\u2019t have a picture of a lady with a black eye or something. I wasn\u2019t going to do that, and I\u2019m really pleased that they didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n Riethman and her classmates weren\u2019t totally thrown to the wolves, however. McClain enlisted Kelly Davis of Riggs, Geno Church of Brains On Fire in Greenville, and Katie Blaker \u201909, art director from Moses Inc. in Phoenix, as mentors, and Church and Blaker were there for all 24 hours.<\/p>\n Well, almost.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll admit I took about a nap between 2:30 and 3:30 a.m.,\u201d Church said. \u201cWe were good cop, bad cop in a way. She in a good way demanded a little more accountability, and because she did I didn\u2019t have to do that as much.<\/p>\n Church stressed the presentation to the client was as\u2014if not more\u2014important than the product, and he was amazed at the result.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter they did that I went out to San Diego to do a similar thing for a really large brand that works with engineering students to come up with product content,\u201d he said. \u201cThe presentation skills of the Furman students were two to three levels above. I was really proud of the students and how they commanded the room. They made sense, they were professional, they were powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n Riethman counts McClain as her \u201cfavorite professor ever,\u201d and the CreateAthon experience is merely another reason why.<\/p>\n \u201cAbout 4 a.m., 5 a.m., we did kind of hit a little wall . . . but it was a lot of fun energy. It kept you going, it kept you excited the whole time. And afterwards I wasn\u2019t tired at all because we were so excited the client loved it,\u201d she said. \u201cAround midnight we had basically had our whole concrete idea figured out, and we got a little nervous. We wondered if we should call him and ask if this is OK before we go any further, or should we just run with it and take a huge risk. We decided to just run with it and take the huge risk.\u201d<\/p>\n Which was precisely the lesson.<\/p>\n \u201cFurman kids are excellent at ideation, coming up with ideas and making connections in a broad way. Where it gets tough is beginning to refine it,\u201d McClain said. \u201cThey slam-dunked it. I was blown-away by what they could do. We put the hotrods in the track, and all it took was just a little bit of mentoring to get them to see how to put it all together.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s been really neat is the kids were so empowered by it. That\u2019s what got me so excited.<\/p>\n You could see how they just lit up when they were in the presentation.\u201d<\/p>\n But what about the campaign itself? Will it ever see the light of day? Smith says there\u2019s no doubt.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll definitely be using this,\u201d he says. \u201cThis will be the lead campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n