In early February, LMU hosted a unique program called The One Club Creative Boot Camp in Los Angeles for students on the west coast interested in learning more about the advertising industry. The boot camp is an intensive 4-day workshop introducing students to the creative side of advertising. Students work on behalf of a real client – in this case, TBWA\Chiat\Day – and follow steps outlined by the industry: receiving a brief, concepting, creating a campaign and pitching it to a group of top industry creatives who determine the best work.
The One Club Creative Boot Camp is a diversity initiative with the goal of recruiting creative students from multicultural backgrounds who may not be aware of advertising or design as viable career options. In addition to Los Angeles, The One Club hosts creative boot camps in New York, Chicago, Atlanta and London.
Sixty students participated in the program and half were LMU students, many of whom are involved in the M-School: Institute of Marketing. The students split up into 11 teams, with four to five students on each team. The assignment? To create an advertising campaign for No-Kill LA (NKLA), a coalition of animal welfare organizations, city shelters and passionate individuals dedicated to ending the killing of healthy and treatable pets in LA shelters.
Two CBA students – Alyssa Diaz, a senior business major, and Francesca Casillas, a sophomore marketing/economics major – were on the winning team that received a One Club gift bag, a one-year membership to The One Club and a paid summer internship at TBWA\Chiat\Day. Additionally, five other LMU students were on the second and third place teams that also received a One Club gift bag and one-year memberships to The One Club. In years past, all members on the winning team had to interview for the internship opportunity and only one student was selected, but in this case, the headhunter from TBWA\Chiat\Day was so impressed he hired all five students as summer interns!
“Jobs and internships will come out of this boot camp and I couldn’t be more thrilled,” said Nicole Rodriguez, Acting Director of Internships & Employer Services at LMU, who also helped coordinate the event. “For the students involved, it was more than an experience – it was a once in a lifetime opportunity for them to learn, grow, meet industry executives and develop their talents.”
LMU hopes to continue bringing innovative programs like The One Club to campus to offer undergraduate and graduate students a unique opportunity to meet new people, learn more about a particular industry and hone their talents and skills for future career success.
For more information about The One Club, visit http://www.oneclub.org/.
