Advertising students devise campaign to help boost tourism in rural southern Illinois counties

Students in the Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising devised an ad campaign that launched this spring to help boost tourism for counties in southern Illinois.  

The campaign was part of a class project in Advertising 400: Sandage Studios, taught last fall by Shachar Meron, senior lecturer in advertising. 

“Our students were excited to research and promote southern Illinois as a great tourist destination, and to use the skills they’ve learned in the classroom to create real work with a real purpose,” Meron said. 

The advertising campaign is part of the Create Bridges program, a statewide initiative to promote tourism in five southern Illinois counties and stimulate economic development in the region. 

Students Kiara Vega, Joshua Witte, and Abby Kubatzke collaborated to create an ad campaign for Southernmost Illinois tourism bureau, promoting Shawnee National Forest as a top place to visit in Illinois. 

They conducted market research and a brand audit, came up with a business strategy and media plan, and created the slogan “Adventure to the Most.” 

Following the eight-week course, Vega and Witte (pictured at right) were hired to work as interns to bring the project to life.

Vega worked as an account and creative director, designing 16 ads that are running on Google from January through June 2024. 

Vega said the experiential learning experience offered her a chance to see what working in an advertising agency entailed.

“It wasn’t just a class where I completed assignments and got a grade,” Vega said. “It was so much fun to work on this project and gain knowledge into the process of not only how an advertising agency works but into creating ads themselves.” 

Witte also appreciated the real-world experience he gained from the class and internship. Part of his job was to research at least 10 social media influencers to post original content and to reshare their ad campaign. Three influencers were selected to engage between January and June 2024. 

“This class’s sense of real work experience encouraged me to hit deadlines harder, care more about the content I was creating, and overall made me enjoy the work I was doing more,” Witte said. “It’s amazing to know that work you do in the classroom will have a bigger impact than just a grade, and [this course] allows one to fully understand this. This has been one of my favorite classes here at UIUC, and I’d recommend it to any advertising major looking for electives.” (Note: ADV 400: Sandage Studios has been renamed ADV 333: Agency Experience beginning Fall 2024.)

Meron and Susan Muirhead, experiential learning programs coordinator in the Sandage Department of Advertising, along with Key Light Consulting LLC and the marketing team at the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning, managed the social media influencers and all the ad buys. 

They are also tracking engagement and collecting data to make sure metrics are recorded and shared with Southernmost Illinois.

Time will tell and data will show how the promotional effort will influence tourism and impact the local economy in the region, but they are optimistic their efforts will prove beneficial to downstate communities and to the Southernmost Illinois tourism bureau.

“The campaign the students created is on par with professional work in terms of strategic direction and creative execution,” Meron said. “I'm proud of the work they did.”

—Kelly Youngblood