Jess Kane is a third year Media Communication Studies student and Vice President of FSU’s chapter of Collegiate Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA). During the last week in January, Jess came in second place in the state of Florida at Collegiate DECA’s Advertising Campaign competition. She is now qualified to compete at the International competition in April in Washington, D.C.

The competition itself took place at Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida, and was part of the 2018 Florida Collegiate DECA State Career Development Conference taking place at the University of Central Florida.

For the Advertising Campaign competition event, Jess had to build an entire advertising campaign for the company of her choice as if she were an advertising agency providing a campaign pitch for a client. The event is intended for one to three people per team/campaign to compete, but Jess competed as a solo entry. She spent roughly three weeks creating the campaign prior to the event. This included creating an executive summary and campaign objectives, identifying and researching the primary and secondary target markets, selecting and researching media to use for the campaign (as well as the reach and frequency of each platform), establishing a budget for the campaign and breaking down media prices, creating a monthly schedule, providing a legal contract if the campaign is selected, and producing original advertising materials. At the competition, Jess had to deliver a 20-minute campaign pitch to the judges, followed by a brief questioning session.

“Needless to say, receiving second place in the state of Florida for my campaign was rewarding,” Jess said. “However, now that I have qualified for the International competition, the second-place award has made me determined to refine my campaign based on what I learned at the State level to make it even better and do well at the International level.

“The win for Florida State University as a whole was very rewarding to me because our chapter sent four people to compete at the State level, and all four of us have qualified to compete at the International level come April.” The other students who participated in various competitions were Austin Riffe, a senior majoring in Administration, Computer Sciences senior Bayan Kharazmi, and Finance and Professional Sales sophomore Alex Puntney.

For more information about FSU’s chapter of Collegiate DECA, click here.