Hard Work Pays Off: Advanced Media Strategies Students Pitch To American Express in New York

The Spring 2015 Media Cohort had the opportunity to work with American Express and digital agency of record, DigitasLBI for their final Advanced Media Strategies client project. Six teams, six students per team, put their media minds to work, competing to win the Amex account. Based out of New York, American Express flew the winning team to the big city as a final round for the team to pitch their plan.

Director of Texas Media and Senior Lecturer, Lisa Dobias surprised her new cohort with an opportunity of any media student’s dream: pitch a winning media plan to American Express.

“I am so proud of all the work that every team put forward,” Dobias said. “It was any team's race. The work that the class produced as a whole…it was such a proud experience for me to see that level of commitment, drive and performance.”

Meet the winning team: Anagama

Team Members: Taryn Lacroix, Autumn Taylor, Emily Berensohn, Laura Almogobar, Amy Kridaratikorn, Auston Roberts-Lenius [left to right in photo above]

Anagama brought passion and determination to this friendly high stakes competition. Students were pushed beyond their comfort zone and were driven to deliver their best work. Project details are limited due to the cohort’s non-disclosure agreement with Amex and Digitas. The scope of the project was to develop a media plan for a national re-launch behind American Express’ new creative messaging.

“It was their [Anagama’s] attention to detail and the cohesiveness of their strategy across platforms, a symphonic orchestrated effort,” Dobias explained, that set the team apart from the others. Anagama presented to a board-of-director level panel. Dobias continued, “the reception was overwhelming...the board’s reception of the ideas, the students and their polished performance. It was beautiful.”

Students believe that The Stan Richards School of Advertising and PR Media Sequence prepared them with the knowledge and tools to succeed. Taryn Lacroix said, “we would not have been able to integrate everything strategically and make it come full circle had it not been for our previous classes.”

Auston Roberts-Lenius shared his final words of advice for following media cohorts, “The more passion you have, the farther you will go in life, and that is a promise.”

September 17, 2015

Check out a Q&A with the team on adgradlife.com.

Susan Burrows
Student Writer
Amanda Marks
Student Writer