TXADPR Bowl Wrap Up & UT Alumni Super Bowl Involvement

This past Sunday The University of Texas Advertising and Public Relations school held their ninth
annual TXADPR Bowl event, headed by Professor Gary Wilcox and student lead, Faith Potter.
With their guidance and support, a team of students prepared live tweets for all the Super Bowl
commercials to be posted while the ads were being aired. These tweets were very successful as
the page ended up ranking in the top 10 mentions on Twitter that evening and had a total of
52,463 impressions. Our team wrote and tweeted 70 tweets, generating 421 engagements, 295
likes, and 9 new followers. Some of the trending topics were #brandbowl #adbowl
#superbowlcommercial #superbowlvii #biggamereviews. The Super Bowl, along with many
other sporting and entertainment events, becomes a big event for the advertising world. As
students this was an exciting opportunity to get involved in a real world event.

We had a variety of UT Moody Alum partake in creating and executing Super Bowl
advertisements. Current professor, Eric Webber has worked on Super Bowl ads for a tech startup
called Agillion as well as for BMW. He explained that the experience he had with Agillion was
actually to tell the client to not run a Super Bowl ad. They failed to listen, and the ad did not go
over well. His experience with BMW was the opposite and ended up being successful. His role
was to promote the ad before and after the game. If the ad is well received, it can be good for
both the client and the agency. However, you can also be on the bad end of publicity when the ad
fails, which is what happened with Agillion. When working in a creative industry there will
always be some wins and some losses. Webber confidently agreed that his educational
background from UT gave him the confidence when working on big projects like these. He
recommends students “focus on finding a place to work where you feel like you can make a
difference, where your work will be appreciated, and where you will find the work personally
meaningful and rewarding” when looking for their future. Webber is a strong role model and
mentor for UT Advertising and Public Relations students.

Another Alumni, Virginia Albert, also shared with us her experience working on Super Bowl
advertisements. Albert was a part of the TXADPR bowl team during her senior year at UT. She
felt that this learning experience taught her how to critically think about work and analyze trends
which she has continued to do throughout her career. This year she worked on a variety of ads
including, Pringles, Frank’s Red Hot, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Bureau. Her role is
leading the report team who puts together reports for their clinics about trends, implications and
key takeaways as they pertain to the client’s brand, category, and discipline. She helps to ensure
her team comes up with the best possible content for their partners and internal team. Albert is a
great example of how our classrooms here at Moody can be applicable to the future.