Three U.T. Ad Grads Present African American Consumer Insight Film

In February 2007, three U.T. Ad Grads were offered with the following assignment by The Center for Brand Research and Burrell Communications (Chicago): "within three weeks create a short documentary film which would provide key consumer insights specific to the African American community".

The project, supervised by Professor Neal Burns and titled The Ties That Bind, was presented in Cincinnati to a 400-person audience at Proctor & Gamble's annual Ethnic Summit and received a standing ovation. Audience members included the entire array of P&G brand and project managers (Tide, Gillette, Charmin, etc.) and key representatives from Disney, Wal-Mart, Coke and other Fortune 500 brands.

Responses to the film presentation were more than enthusiastic: "Amazing." "Moving." "The students blew me away." Participating Ad Grads included M.A. Account Planning track student Jaarmyia Williams, M.A. Creative track student Quentin Perry, and Ph.D. Candidate Linden Dalecki. Following the intense capstone experience Jaarmyia stated, "There is this assumption that when you do research on a minority group in which you are already a member that you have nothing new to learn. But the opposite was true for me." Quentin asserted, "You sometimes forget that even big corporations are made of people-I was impressed by the enormous responsibility the P&G marketing team felt." Linden averred, "It was great to be involved in a project that intersected manifold personal interests-African American culture, filmmaking, ethnography, and a healthy dose of good old fashion account planning."

All three students graduate in spring or summer 2007 and are gratified to have The Ties That Bind on their respective resumes. The film will be screened as part of this year's Urban Media Symposium on April 7th, and will also be screened in France this May in the Cannes Short Film Corner.

3/29/2007