SMU students design advertising campaign
for Fox Sports Southwest’s college football programming

SMU Cox students design college football advertising campaign for Fox Sports Southwest.

Commercial by SMU Cox students

By RYAN OSBORNE
The Dallas Morning News

Jeremy Moran and his Southern Methodist University classmates were stuck.

For weeks this spring, they tossed around ideas and strategies during the early stages of a semester-long project for their honors sports marketing class at the Cox School of Business.

“It was just sessions of brainstorming that went nowhere,” Moran said.

But the blank slate the group began with gradually grew into a detailed marketing campaign complete with a commercial script that will be used to promote Fox Sports Southwest’s college football programming this fall.

“Sofa Stadium: The Best Seat in the House,” beat out three other groups in professor Judy Foxman’s Honors Practicum class. The commercial was shot in July at two Dallas locations and centers on bringing an in-game experience to the living room. Fifteen- and 30-second spots will run this month and throughout the college football season.

The campaign features friends gearing up for a game with body paint and tailgating food before loading into a truck and driving it through a living room wall into the “Sofa Stadium.”

The project was coordinated through Fox’s Creative University, a program that partners the network with colleges across the country, giving students an opportunity to design a campaign similar to the one Moran’s group produced. It began in the spring of 2009 at the University of Florida and the University of Southern California. The program has since partnered with 14 more schools.

Moran, a May graduate who works for Sabre Holdings in Southlake, headed the winning team, but the duties and input were equally divided, he said. Jessica Webb, Lauren Miller, Caroline Stapleton and Samantha Zivin made up the rest of “Team Synergy,” which won the competition after presenting its plan to Fox executives.

“There really was no process — we were just brainstorming, and we came up with this great theme for the campaign,” Moran said.

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