Date of Defense

4-13-2022

Date of Graduation

6-2022

Department

Marketing

First Advisor

Karen Lancendorfer

Second Advisor

Greg Gerfen

Abstract

Meta Quest 2, a leader in virtual reality (VR) technology, asked advertising students across the nation to compete in an integrated marketing campaign for the NSAC American Advertising Federation Case Competition held virtually in April 2022. The client provided teams with a brief that included background on the company, the current problems they were facing, the objectives for the campaign, considerations to keep in mind, and a ten-million-dollar budget. Our team was made up of senior Advertising and Promotions students, led by Dr. Karen Lancendorfer and assisted by Professor Greg Gerfen at Western Michigan University, researched, strategized, created, and presented a fully integrated marketing campaign for the client to implement.

After receiving the brief, the first step was to conduct and collect primary and secondary research, respectively. The purpose of this research was to find out what the current perceptions were of the VR industry as well as the current thoughts about Meta Quest 2. While we were given a target audience, we also conducted our research in a way to confirm that this was a good fit for our product. Through our research we confirmed that 18–24-year-olds were the target audience, so our campaign focused a lot on Generation Z (Gen Z). From our research we determined that our target audience, Discoverers, are a generation full of individuals looking to the horizon for their next big adventure. This led to the creation of our campaign slogan: “Explore What’s Next. Quest is Ready.”

After developing our big idea of “Explore What’s Next. Quest is Ready” the team put together a national media schedule using various channels in order to reach our target audience. This included: search engine optimizations, user-generated content, a microsite content hub, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, university partnerships, a Target partnership, a Chegg partnership, micro-influencers, Spotify, Amazon, and Snapchat. All of these various outlets featured creative executions that our creative team developed specifically for the Discoverers. Once the research was completed, the big idea was formed, and the creative executions produced, the production team created the Plans Book, a 26-page document that features our research, insights, and creative executions for our “Explore What’s Next. Quest is Ready” campaign. As the Plans Book was being completed, other team members helped to develop the script and slide deck that aligned with the tone of the campaign in preparation for the twenty-minute presentation. Finally, a team of presenters recorded the final presentation to submit for the competition.

My role in the creation of the “Explore What’s Next. Quest is Ready” campaign was as one of the department heads of the Strategy and Consumer Insights team along with one of my peers. Together we led a team of eight members, including ourselves, in collecting and analyzing all primary research, as well as analyzing all secondary data. My partner and I were the bridge between our team and the account executives. I also helped to write the presentation script and was a part of the Question-and-Answer team that met with the judges.

On April 8, 2022, our team of Advertising and Promotions students competed virtually in the NSAC American Advertising Federation Case Competition. We placed first in our district for the first time, and we will be moving onto the semi-finals in May 2022.

Access Setting

Honors Thesis-Restricted

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