This fall, Lindenwood University placed fifth at the Digital Marketing Competition. The Digital Marketing Competition is an international competition for college students tasked with developing and pitching a digital marketing campaign.

This year’s competition saw a record-high 271 universities compete.

Lindenwood seniors Kelli Nasseth, Natalie Gane, and Matt Tilley created a new business idea involving “Sole Search” – a child safety device attached to the shoelaces of a child’s shoe and is worn as a trinket on the front of the shoe. Parents are then able to use the tracker while their kids are out of site. However, no website, social media channels, or marketing strategies were available to each team. Each team of college students also received a fictitious budget of $500,000 to pay for advertising assets.

"Placing (fifth) signifies to me not just success, but that dedication and knowledge pay off," Nasseth said.

Gane echoed similar thoughts about her experience.

"It makes me inspired to do more, especially when we all worked so hard,” Gane said. “It feels amazing to see everything we learned come together.”

To create an advertising campaign, students went through the same series of steps that professionals use. Those steps included: identifying the client problem, performing situational analysis (SWOT), researching published data, conducting primary research using qualitative and/or quantitative methods, articulating campaign objectives, among many others.

Each team’s project also had to consist of paid/earned/owned – a digital marketing strategy commonly used – as well as an artificial intelligence aspect. If verified by the team’s research and within the allotted budget, the campaign could also have included traditional, non-traditional, direct marketing, sales promotion, sponsorship, endorsers, merchandising, packaging, and point-of-purchase.

Lindenwood’s team scored very high in primary and secondary research, paid-earned/owned strategies, other campaign assets, media usage, and evaluation methods, as well as other areas. Lindenwood’s team of students also completed this campaign while enrolled in an advertising copyediting course that uses high impact practices, which prepares them to work in the industry.

Through this competition, Lindenwood students gained valuable insight into real-world scenarios by gaining experience and working together as a team to achieve their goal. With this experience, these students will now be able to incorporate that knowledge into their professional endeavors.