This Means War: Using an Advertising War Room Simulation to] Teach Social Media Skills

Abstract

The need for hands-on learning in advertising education has been expressed for decades. With the increasing push toward live tweeting by brands, more attention needs to be given in advertising classrooms to opportunities for students to practice online engagement. In this study, a class "war room" simulation offered an experiential learning opportunity and gave students a taste of how brands and their advertising agencies are handling Twitter and other social media channels during major live events like the Super Bowl. This handson exercise could give professors another tool to help reduce the gap between academic knowledge and real-world skills. Through a post-event discussion and survey, students said they learned the importance of teamwork, client relationships and quick thinking. They were able to practice live tweeting on a client's behalf, interacting with followers and working under pressure.

Using Twitter in the Marketing and Advertising Classroom to Develop Skills for Social Media Marketing and Personal Branding

“…There has been a recent steady increase in empirical research of undergraduate students' use of Twitter in the classroom from the disciplines of psychology (Blessing, Blessing & Fleck, 2012), communications (Bowdon, 2014;Crews & Stitt-Gohdes, 2012;Elavsky, Mislan & Elavsky, 2011;Kinsky, 2015;Kinsky & Bruce, 2016), marketing (Clarke & Nelson, 2012;Lowe & Laffey, 2011;Rinaldo et al, 2011;Ucok Hughes, 2014), pharmacy (Fox & Varadarajan, 2011), information systems (Johnston, Chen & Hauman, 2013), pre-health professional majors (Junco, Elavsky & Heiberger, 2013;Junco, Heiberger & Loken, 2011), economics (Kassens, 2014), sustainability (Kassens-Noor, 2012), history (McKenzie, 2014;Pollard, 2014), teacher education (Prestridge, 2014), global policies (Wakefield, Warrren & Alsobrook, 2011) and sociology and anthropology (Welch & Bonnan-White, 2012). Approximately half of the cited studies required the use of Twitter for course content assignments, and the other half of these studies only used Twitter as a pedagogical enhancement (an aid to course mechanics).…”

From Introducing the World Wide Web to Teaching Advertising in the Digital Age: A Content Analysis of the past Twenty Years of the Journal of Advertising Education

“…JAE has a history of publishing articles on teaching industry-related skills as they apply to creative (Barnes & Lloyd, 1997;Beard & Tarpenning, 2001;Blakeman & Haley, 2005;Duke, 2001;Habib, 2015;Johnson & Jones, 2010;Robbs, 2010;Stuhlfaut, 2007), media (Kim & Patel, 2012;Kinsky, 2015;Martin, 2002;Slater, Robbs & Lloyd, 2002), account planning (Lavery, 2000;Morrison, Christy & Haley, 2003), internships and employment (Kendrick & Fullerton, 2002;Kendrick & Fullerton, 2003;Maynard & Saewitz, 2008;McMillan, Sheehan, Heinemann & Frazier, 2001;Perlmutter & Fletcher, 1999;Roznowski & Wrigley, 2003;Taylor & Sheehan, 1997;Yoo & Morris, 2015) and student competitions (Fullerton, Kendrick & Frazier, 2009;Marra, Avery & Grabe, 1997;Parker, 2000;Spiller & Marold, 2015;Weir, 1999).…”