Ad Club Mid-Term

 Introduction

Beginning my third year at K-State, I also began my second year as the KSU Ad Club Vice President. I have loved every opportunity that this position has given me over the years and I’m excited to share how much of an impact it has had in my career experience as well as the experience that I’ve brought into Ad Club. In past years we’ve hosted small events, and I mean small, but this year I think our end goal is to grow our membership numbers so we can begin working with other organizations on campus or local businesses like we did in past years.

This Year in Ad Club

Our executive board started the year strong by talking about things that could help us achieve our end goal during our first meeting. We covered things like becoming more present on our current social media accounts and creating accounts for other popular platforms such as TikTok. We started this year’s social media presence by introducing all of the executive members on Instagram (@ksuadclub) and Facebook (@KSUAdClub). This consisted of a short series of graphics I’d created and personalized for each member, this gave a little insight to our followers about some of the small things we’ll be doing this year or the collaborations we have planned.

Our first event this year was Kedzipalooza, hosted by the K-State A.Q. Miller School. During this tabling event we hosted a logo guessing game and gave potential new members information about Ad Club and what we have planned for the year. This event allowed us to speak with 35 new students interested in joining our organization. Being our first event of the school year, we had a lot of people simply searching for information about us or looking for extra credit for attending the event; this had still been an extremely successful event for Ad Club, however.

Following this event, the Ad Club President and I attended Spark KC at the KU Edwards Campus. This is an annual networking event hosted by the KC Ad Club with various KC professionals representing their companies. Being the first year I've attended this event, I was surprised with the opportunities and information presented here.

We’ve also gotten the privilege to work with some members of the K-State Marketing Department this year as well. We introduced one of their students as our new event coordinator, and she has been a great addition to our executive board. One of our first events this year was an advertising and marketing collaboration to host a Zoom panel with three Kansas City professionals: Moroch Partners' Sierra Marstall, J29 Creative Group's Jennifer Kwok, and Go Local Interactive's Grant Leonard.

We have a number of events planned for the remainder of the school year as well as some new opportunities in the works for next fall. From resume and portfolio workshops to planning the AdPR Summit with PRSSA in the spring, we're offering many networking and career advancement opportunities to our new members and I couldn't be happier to see so many new students showing interest in Ad Club.

What I've Learned

Over the last two years in Ad Club I've been given many opportunities to network with advertising professionals and other students in the AdPR program both at K-State and other schools in Kansas, which has helped me grow in a number of ways. I've learned that there are a number of ways to come back from losing nearly every member of an organization, it just takes some time. At this time we've gained 15 new members who have attended meetings and are willing to help out our executive board in any way they can. This has been a big challenge for us but it has also been a great chance for us and all of our new members, which has been tremendously rewarding.