Before working as the senior coordinator of social content and engagement for the Chicago White Sox, Jordan Doyle was a graduate student at C&IS. Doyle expressed that the graduate program at UA stood out to her because the program combined advertising and public relations courses together and allowed her to focus on her passion: sports.
One class in particular – the graduate campaigns class – helped Doyle bridge the gap between theory and practice. The campaigns course is designed to connect students with real-world clients and create a comprehensive and achievable advertising campaign with a team of four people. In Jordan’s case, her team worked on the NASCAR account, where she served as the account leader.
“The campaigns class experience really helped me when going into the sports industry,” said Doyle, “It was beneficial because you’re taking everything you learned and putting it to practice.”
The class is divided into teams and each team has four specializations: media, research, account manager and creative. Randall Huffaker, an instructor at UA, has taught the campaigns class – both on the graduate and undergraduate levels – for the past ten years. He stated that the purpose of this class is for advertising and public relations students to apply their skill sets in a demanding and realistic scenario. The combination of both public relations and advertising students working together creates sustainable, strategy-driven campaigns for clients across multiple fields. Past clients include the CMA Fest, Advocate Healthcare, Fox Sports and in Doyle’s experience: NASCAR.
As of March, Doyle is the managing editor of all White Sox social media platforms and assists their community relations efforts, ticket sales and influencer marketing via social media promotion. Doyle works across departments to promote the White Sox brand and states that she values new ideas from college students and young professionals for social media strategies.
“I am always excited to see what the college mindset is and how they view what is happening today in baseball,” said Doyle.
Thus, it came as a natural fit for the White Sox to become a client for Huffaker’s campaign class this year. Doyle believes that this partnership will help bring new ideas for fan engagement and social influence to the White Sox brand. Huffaker’s campaigns class is currently working directly with Doyle and her team to produce agency-level deliverables that are rooted in insights and social listening data. Doyle commented that she is already impressed with the students and that their questions in a recent video call “blew most of the previous agencies’ questions out of the water.”
We will check back in with this campaigns class in December to see what great work they produced!
