EAST LANSING, Mich. -- Two Michigan State University students won the inaugural Washington Media Scholars Case Competition that challenged college undergraduates to create a media plan for a hypothetical public-policy campaign.
The students competed against 65 other teams from U.S. universities in a program sponsored by the Washington Media Scholars Foundation, a non-partisan, nonprofit foundation.
Laura Kovacek said she was stunned when she and her teammate, Maria Bianchi, were announced as the winners at a June 10 reception in Washington, D.C. The two had entered the competition on a whim.
“I actually just heard about this in a little blurb on the bottom of the Honors College (weekly e-mail) Digest,” Kovacek said.
The MSU students won a $2,500 scholarship each, as well as the National Excellence in Media Award. An additional $5,000 in scholarships will be donated to MSU in their names.
Kovacek, 20, from Harper Woods, is double-majoring in social relations and policy as well as political theory and constitutional democracy. Bianchi, 20, from Buffalo, N.Y., is majoring in political theory and constitutional democracy. Both are seniors in MSU's James Madison College and the Honors College.
The two beat out five other finalist teams from Arizona State University, Barry University, Indiana University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Each team of two was given the same hypothetical scenario and real-life advertising costs and poll numbers. The teams took the role of a fictitious campaign manager named “Jane Powell” who worked for a firm that wanted voters to vote “yes” to require various government websites from the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area to be combined.
The teams had six weeks to develop media plans – which used text, tables and graphics – to gain support for the issue and get voters to the polls. Their plans had to include a budget and identify the most effective type of advertising to reach their target audience.
The 12 finalists were flown to Washington on June 6, where they spent a week meeting with media professionals and learning about the industry. Each team made half-hour presentations to top national public-affairs experts who questioned and judged their media plans.
More than 250 media representatives from across the country attended the June 10 networking reception where the winning team was announced.
“We would have dinner as a group, and then you’d end up sitting across the table from the vice president of advertising for Time Warner, and just getting to talk to those people in a more casual setting was very, very cool,” Bianchi said.
“It was an amazing week,” Kovacek added. “I came in not knowing anything about media and just sort of did this on a whim because it sounded interesting and learned so much information, got to meet all of these people who I’ve seen on TV or read in newspapers, and it was just absolutely incredible.”
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