Students develop strategies during 24-hour marathon
Associate professor Karen Mallia’s Creative Leadership class hosted USC’s annual CreateAthon on Friday and Saturday. During the 24-hour event, students created marketing and communications campaigns for six nonprofit organizations in the Columbia area.
Edgefield County Theatre Company, Federation of Families of South Carolina, Harvest Hope Food Bank, Sexual Trauma Services of the Midlands, Sistercare Inc. and Tutor Eau Claire received pro bono advertising and creative services through the event.
Each of the six teams was made up of students from the class who communicated the needs of the company to six to 10 other student team members. A documentary team covered the event, handling its social media. Over 73 students applied to participate, and the class had to turn some students away because of the overwhelming response.
This type of nonprofit work was started by the Riggs Partners of Columbia 16 years ago and has since gone national. More than 80 agencies have been involved nationwide, and USC is the fourth university to host a CreateAthon.
“It’s challenging to bring this kind of formula to the student realm because obviously they don’t have the same amount of skills and training as seasoned professionals, but also the kind of preparation work,” Mallia said. “That’s why I embedded it in a class, because you have to have some of the prep work done ahead of time in order for them to hit the ground with a strategy or a creative brief that is prepared.”
Alex Rodbell, the event manager and a fourth-year public relations student, said she got to learn skills related to her interests in event planning and client management.
“I’ve definitely learned a lot about working with other people, especially creative people,” Rodbell said. “It’s been great to work with them and see how that might play out in my future as an account manager and how to work with other students as well as professionals and putting out real-time work.”
With a tight time frame, students also learned how to work under pressure.
“They learned a lot of things, some of which we intended and some of which we didn’t,” Mallia said. “I mean, the intentional things like the ability to not just do great work but to do great work under pressure and to sometimes change course in midstream, because they would love for it to be a linear process, but unfortunately the creative process often works in fits and starts.”
The work that the students were able to do in 24 hours exceeded expectations, Rodbell said.
“Pretty much every group went so far and beyond what the client wanted. They’ve all been overly, overly impressed by the work we’ve presented [to] them,” Rodbell said. “This isn’t just a class where you’re creating for a fake company. This is stuff these people are going to be using in real life.”
Rodbell, who was a part of the Harvest Hope team said the best part was presenting the final product to her client.
“Being able to see the satisfaction on his face and the surprise in what we were able to show him made … being awake worth it,” Rodbell said. “Knowing that we truly made a difference for that company, who can’t afford to do something on their own, and we were able to provide them with really professional quality work that would have cost them upwards of thousands of dollars if it were not through us.”