Industry is taking notice of a DIT Masters' course group, who were invited to devise an advertising strategy for the beer brand, writes Gabrielle Monaghan.
Sometimes a Masters' degree can prove more than just a way of earning better job prospects or climbing the next rung on the career ladder - it can land you an immediate chance of attracting the cream of the industry, as students of the MSc course in advertising at Dublin Institute of Technology found out.
Diageo, which distributes Budweiser in Ireland, asked the 25-strong class of 2006 to devise an advertising campaign for Budweiser, the US brand owned by Anheuser-Busch, that would revive sales of the brew in Ireland.
The students, divided into two working advertising agencies, pitched their ideas to the company yesterday and may have their concepts used by Diageo if successful.
"It would be a long shot - the reality is Diageo employs the biggest advertising agencies in the world - but it's still a real brief from a real client and senior people from the industry will be watching," says Brian Ross, a senior tutor at DIT with 30 years' experience in advertising, who is helping to oversee the students' project.
The Budweiser account is currently held by Irish International BBDO, founded in 1966 and one of Ireland's busiest advertising agencies.
Diageo is seeking fresh ideas for the brand amid greater competition in the Irish alcohol market and to meet changing lifestyles and tastes.
Sales of Budweiser, along with sales of other beers such as Smithwicks, Harp and Carlsberg, declined in the first quarter, Diageo Ireland reported in October.
Representatives from Irish International, along with almost 200 executives from Dublin's advertising industry, attended the presentation by the DIT students.
Even if the students' ideas are not picked up and subsequently used by Diageo in an advertising campaign, the pitches represent the "single most effective recruiting event" for Irish advertising agencies, according to Eamon Clarkin, group planning director of Irish International.
"It showcases more good people in one place at one time than any other forum," Clarkin says.
An average of 360 people apply for just 26 places on the DIT masters course in advertising each year.
Demand for new entrants to the €1.3 billion Irish advertising industry remains high as ongoing economic prosperity leads organisations and companies to increase their spend for television and radio campaigns as well as billboard, online and print advertising.
Indeed, the overall spend on advertising in Ireland climbed 8 per cent between January and September of last year, according to the most recent figures from industry umbrella organisation the Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland.
Each student agency worked for six weeks on research and strategy development for the Budweiser campaign before competing against each other in the presentation.
The pitches are a culmination of a year's study of advertising disciplines such as consumer behaviour, copywriting and art direction, taught by some of the leading practitioners in these areas. The postgraduate student group is expected to enter the advertising industry later this month.
"It's an intensive course, with many lecturers drawn not just from academia but from the industry itself," Ross says.
"It's a source of recruitment for the advertising industry - like a shop window - and the industry leans heavily on it."
Even if the DIT postgraduate class is not chosen to partake in the Budweiser campaign, advertising executives who attended their presentation are more likely to check out the students' CVs on the programme's website to view potential employees, according to Ross.
