Got a PR Challenge? The Marketing Initiative Can Help Out. [06/06/2006]

by Terry Cone

USF Mass Communications students assist community organizations. Apply by July 28. Click here for application and information.

Seniors in Service to Tampa Bay is an organization whose purpose is to recruit and place volunteers over the age of 60 to work with children and with homebound seniors.

“We have a never ending need for volunteers,” says Nancy McWilliams, Director of Operations and Communications for the organization. “It’s a serious public relations problem for us and we got some real help from the USF Marketing Initiative.”

The Marketing Initiative is a partnership between USF’s School of Mass Communications and the USF Collaborative for Children, Families and Communities.

Under the Initiative, students in the Advanced Public Relations course accept university or community groups as clients for intensive market research and public relations program development. Students work together as a team to provide their client with high quality research on a specific public relations problem and cost-effective, audience appropriate solutions.

Being part of the USF Marketing Initiative really exceeded our expectations,” continues McWilliams. “The students gave us a whole lot of ideas we hadn’t thought of and took ideas we had and made them even better.”

McWilliams heartily recommends the service to other organizations. “The experience was worth more than the time and effort and money we put into it many times over,” she says. “Plus, dealing with the students was fun. They were excited and eager and thoroughly pleasant to work with.”

Other Marketing Initiative clients include Arts Ybor, Community Tampa Bay, Florida Association of Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists Foundation, Florida Kinship Center, Girl Scouts of Suncoast Council, Homeless Emergency Project, Resilience and Protective Factors Working Group, Special Olympics of Hillsborough County, Tampa Alcohol Coalition, USF Alumni Association and VSA Arts of Florida.

The Marketing Initiative is currently seeking clients for the Fall 2006 Semester. The program is open to all organizations, for profit and not-for-profit, in Hillsborough County. Community groups must apply in advance and contribute $500 toward the students’ expenses. Applications are due by July 28, 2006. Organizations will be selected by August 14. The projects will begin September 5 and end the week of November 27.

Click here for application and information.