Graduate Students Create Communication Campaign for NASA

A team of Advertising Graduate and RTF Undergraduate students will travel to Florida this summer to participate in the "NASA Means Business Competition." Last fall, students submitted a rough proposal of campaign ideas in the form of storyboards, which granted them an invitation to participate in the final competition in late May. This year's finalists also include: ASPIRE (Arizona State University and the Art Institute of Phoenix), Utah State University, The University of New Hampshire, and Bentley College in Massachusetts.

Each year, NASA gives selected finalist student teams $1000 to achieve their mission. This year's tasks included having students research, design, and develop a promotion plan for the International Space Station; produce a promotional video presentation that implements the plan; and to develop and implement an outreach plan to educate the public about NASA and the International Space Station.

The team has worked together this semester to develop a communications campaign that will be presented at the competition. Some campaign components include two 30-second spots, an innovative viral Internet campaign, and a collection of non-traditional media ideas.

In the development phase of the communications campaign, the students took a holistic approach to understanding NASA through the collection of market research data. As part of the research, students conducted focus groups and distributed surveys around the UT-Austin community. A few members of the team traveled to Washington, D.C. and conducted surveys of a random sample of people from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

The team of UT students along with their four competitors will travel to Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 24th to present their ideas to the NASA judges. The overall winner of the competition will then travel to Washington, D.C. later on in the year in the fall to present their work at NASA headquarters, as well receiving the honor of having their PSA commercial spots played on NASA TV. 

5/5/2005