LINDSEY BOERMA
Living Assitant
Whether you’re catching a bus to work, eating out at a fancy restaurant with that special someone, obnoxiously cheering on your favorite team at the ballpark or merely throwing away the remains of your lunch in a garbage bin, you can be sure that advertisements are a substantial part of the setting. Now, with advertisements showing up even in airline security bins, people are feeling the pressures of media influence everywhere they go, and Pepperdine students are no exception.
However, while advertisements on Pepperdine’s campus and advertisements in the outside media world vary in terms of tactics and technique, students are undoubtedly influenced, whether consciously or subconsciously, by both.
Jerry Derloshon, Director of Public Relations and News at Pepperdine, is in charge of advertising in the local community.
While the advertisements he handles are not made specifically for Pepperdine students, he said that students are still affected by such media within the community.
Tristan Hack, senior advertising major and president of Pepperdine’s Student Advertising Agency, is currently involved in a nationwide contest through the American Advertising Federation to head Coca-Cola’s newest ad campaign.
“Coca-Cola is by far the largest client we’ve had, and to represent that involves a lot of research, surveys and strategy,” Hack said. “We basically have to take our differences and put them together. I personally think that the Student Advertising Agency is the single best opportunity for anyone in communications to be seen by the top advertising executives in the nation.”
The Coca-Cola campaign that the Student Advertising Agency is working on is a perfect example of outside companies and markets that make their way onto Pepperdine’s campus.
“Even though salesmen aren’t allowed on campus, products pretty much advertise themselves at Pepperdine,” freshman Nicole Johnson said.
“Like, everyone knows about Seattle Coffee and Starbucks because they’re sold on campus, and then sometimes the school gives out Malibu Yo coupons, which is obviously a form of advertising too. I’d say advertising on campus is mostly for regional things, but it’s definitely still there.”
One form of advertising that reaches college students possibly more effectively than any other kind is the ever-growing marketing system of the Internet.
“Pepperdine’s kind of in a bubble in the sense that students aren’t really exposed to a lot of advertisements in the outside world,” Hack said.
“The average person is exposed to thousands of advertisements each day, and because Pepperdine students don’t typically watch television and there are no billboards along Pacific Coast Highway, that doesn’t really apply to them. That’s why the Internet is such a huge source of advertising when the targeted audience is college students, because all students are exposed to the internet.”
Derloshon said he believes that the Internet is such an effective means of advertising that more time and money should be put toward it.
“The Internet provides advertising opportunities that might prove more productive than print or television,” Derloshon said.
“We need to continue to become smarter about ways to invest marketing dollars that actually reach the intended targeted audience. To do that, we need to reach where they live, and that can be done through the Internet, via handheld and text messaging or even with a message that comes up as someone’s downloading a song.”
Another crucial aspect of advertising in terms of Pepperdine is location. Many agree that people within the Malibu community are influenced by advertisements merely because they are surrounded by the trends of the Los Angeles area.
While Hack agreed that location does play an essential role in advertising, he also said he believes that college students are generally are not the most receptive audiences to advertisements.
“We’re in an area where Hollywood sets the trends, but the fact is that younger markets don’t like ads and corporate images,” he said.
“Advertising has this negative connotation where people think of it as a vulture out to get you. My hope is that advertising can get to a point where it’s more personal and genuine, and that amazing creative ideas can actually begin to relate to the products.”
03-22-2007