FIRNW is a student-run advertising agency at Portland State University. I was a copywriter for the agency for the entirety of my last year at PSU. I was also fortunate enough to become the Creative Director of copy writing during my final two terms.
Each term, the agency does a self-promotion campaign to recruit students to join the agency. It serves to not only get students to join the agency, but more broadly, increase awareness for the advertising program as a whole.
Students are extremely busy, and don’t often pay attention to any signs or posters that are hung up around the school.
So, with no budget, and a large office to hang posters on, we knew that we had to create something bold and eye catching to grab their attention. Something that would make them second guess what they just saw, and have to look at it again to make sure they weren’t imagining it.
This lead to our VOTE FOR FIR Campaign.
The campaign launched in November 2018 to coincide with the mid-term elections. The campaign had nothing to do with the actual election, it was just the inspiration for the voting theme.
Through the campaign, we wanted to show other students how fun and creative advertising can be. We made the posters and copy as outlandish, and fun as we possibly could. We also placed “ballots” across the business building as another way of playing off the voting theme, and increase the bizarre nature of the campaign.
We ended up seeing an increase in the number of applicants to FIR, and the total number of students enrolled in FIR the next term increased to 30.
Here is a sampling of the campaign: