Cases and Campaigns Class Wins Platinum MarCom Award

The Public Relations class Cases and Campaigns in Fall 2022 won the Platinum MarCom award for their campaign for Thriving Grant County/Thriving Mill Township. This is the highest recognition of the MarCom Awards, which is one of the largest, most-respected creative competitions in the world. Each year, about 6,500 print and digital entries are submitted from dozens of countries.

MarCom is administered by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals (AMCP). Founded in 1995, the international organization consists of several thousand marketing, communication, advertising, public relations, digital, and web professionals. AMCP administers recognition programs, provides judges, and rewards outstanding achievement and service to the community.

Dr. Donna Downs, associate professor of Communication, teaches this class and enters the campaigns into the competition. The possible awards a campaign can win are Honorable Mention, Silver, Gold, and Platinum.

"When you get a Platinum, it shows that you’ve done excellent work," Downs said. "And I think what the class did with Thriving was excellent work."

Mission-Oriented Learning

Thriving Mill Township is a community-focused organization that addresses societal issues facing children and families of Mill Township through strengthening community, family well-being, and career readiness.

The class worked with this client to create a campaign that would benefit the local communities in Grant County.

Senior Public Relations and Multimedia Journalism major Marissa Muljat found that her biggest takeaway from the class was the importance of clarity in messaging.

"One of my team’s objectives was to simplify and clarify Thriving’s brand through various tactics, such as evaluating and re-writing the organization’s mission statement," she said. "Through meetings with Ashley Shirley, executive director of Thriving, we were able to gain a better understanding of the organization’s mission and focus areas so that we could design content and produce messaging that offered a more fluid image of the organization."

Muljat said that the team collaboration aspect of the class prepared her for a future in the field of public relations. The students also found value in working with a real, local client, especially a client with such a community-facing impact.

"Working for a real client during class was a positive learning experience for me," Muljat said. "It definitely added various challenges and obstacles to our coursework but overcoming those allowed for more meaningful learning. I think that working with a client like Thriving Grant County, an organization dedicated to improving the lives of the Grant County community, added a deeper sense of value to the work we were producing."

The Kingdom over the Award

Downs' intention for the class is to teach them how campaigns work, and to help them understand the importance of community engagement. She wants them to complete the class knowing how to use the content wisely, learning that they have a place in the community, and understanding the vital importance of civic engagement.

"It’s about doing work for the community that they can use to better their organizations," she said. "Serving as you learn and learning as you serve. Doing that kind of a course with a service-learning component shows students the difference that they can make in their communities whether or not they can give financially. They have knowledge and wisdom that they can share with their community."

Thriving is now implementing the campaign that Taylor Public Relations students created.

An Impactful Public Relations Degree

Do you want to have a role in this kind of hands-on PR experience and more? Check out our Public Relations degree options and schedule a visit to learn how you can “thrive” in PR at Taylor!