CNU Wins Gold Collegiate ECHO Award
News Release - October 8, 2003
contact:
Dr. Lisa Spiller
757-594-7099
Dr. Carol Scovotti
594-7116
CNU students receive the ECHO award from the DMEF and Mazda North America Operations. From left to right are Drs. Carol Scovotti and Lisa Spiller, faculty advisors, ECHO team members LaToya Hall, Karen Taylor and Charles George. Presenting the award from Mazda were Tracy Burkhardt and Dave Sanabria. Camilo Daza, the fourth student on the team, is not included in the photo. The Direct Marketing Educational Foundation (DMEF) has awarded the 2003 Leonard J. Raymond Collegiate ECHO Award to Christopher Newport University (CNU). This year’s marketing campaign contest, sponsored by Mazda North American Operations (MNAO), attracted 231 entries from 40 colleges and universities across the country. Senior marketing management from Mazda as well as top direct marketing professionals judged CNU’s entry, “Satisfy Your Passion for Excitement,” the top pick of all undergraduate submissions.
“This work could have easily come from one of our current creative agencies,” said T.J. Karl, of Relationship Marketing, MNAO. “The case was definitely read with a ‘maybe we should try that’ tone.”
The members of this year’s CNU winning team are Camilo Daza, Charles George, LaToya Hall and Karen Taylor. Daza, Hall and Taylor graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in Direct Marketing last May. Charles George is scheduled to graduate with the same degree and concentration this December. Both Dr. Lisa Spiller and Dr. Carol Scovotti serve as faculty advisors to the team.
CNU team members and faculty advisors will be awarded their trophy on October 12 at The Direct Marketing Association International ECHO Awards ceremony at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL. Their prize includes transportation, accommodations, and attendance to the DMA 86th Annual Conference & Exhibition. Students will also receive scholarships from Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism should they decide to enter the graduate program in Integrated Marketing Communications.
For marketing professionals, the ECHO is a highly coveted award, much like the Oscar is for actors and the Grammy for musicians. The Collegiate ECHO Competition is designed to give students an opportunity to turn theory into practice. Students are challenged to combine their knowledge, research and creativity to create a comprehensive direct marketing plan for the sponsor/client. This year’s contest focused on increasing sales, leasing and market penetration for MNAO’s Protégé 5. Email and print advertising were required. Direct mail was optional.
The CNU team conducted marketing research, formulated strategy, developed creative materials and determined a media plan and completed a budget with a Return on Investment analysis.
When asked what set the CNU entry apart from the others, T.J. Karl explained, “Satisfy Your Passion for Excitement was a truly outstanding package. Their plan was by far the most integrated of all the finalists. The team did thorough marketing research to arrive at a simple but very insightful and actionable segmentation. The strategy flowed logically from this research and was supported by an informative media plan. The judges were also impressed with the overall quality and completeness of the creative. The team provided examples of direct mail, newspaper ads, magazine ads, etc. To top it all off, the package was extremely polished and showed the amount of effort that must have been put into it. This could have easily have come from one of our current creative agencies.”
Past sponsors during the 19 years of the Collegiate ECHO competition has included Bank One, BMG Direct, Ford Motor Company, Pitney Bowes, Publishers’ Clearing House, the U.S. Postal Service and Upjohn (Rogaine). The 2002 sponsor was Hallmark Cards. In that competition, a CNU team took second place in the country. That was the first time that CNU students had competed for the ECHO.
“We are extremely proud of our ECHO team and the faculty advisors,” said Dr. Donna T. Mottilla, Dean of the School of Business. “It is gratifying to watch out students perform so effectively in a national competition. This award, along with last year’s Silver, is an important external validation of the quality of CNU’s students, faculty, and educational programs.”
CNU’s School of Business was established in 1979 to educate and prepare undergraduate students for graduate studies and for leadership in business and community. Approximately 800 students are enrolled as pre-business, business or accounting majors and 85 percent of the faculty hold terminal degrees in their disciplines.
