Touch of class: Student work blossoms with project spearheaded by Levy, CBS Records

Student work for the new CD, above, includes everything from Web marketing to tea bags to artwork.

Jared Levy ('04) has provided a gift to the School that keeps on giving: His own clients.

When Levy took a job with the prestigious Union Entertainment Group handling music-industry talent, he quickly realized he was not only in need of a lot of creative ideas, he was quite possibly in a unique position to obtain them.

Recalling how his Advertising instructors used major brands to help students produce reality-inspired advertisements and campaigns, Levy knew he could help them take that concept to the next level.

"When I was a student at journalism school, I had the opportunity to take the campaigns class under (adjunct instructor) Walt Pearls, and our project was The Nature Conservancy. The project went well, but I didn't truly feel like I was creating work that might be used. It was more of a contained educational 'real world' advertising project. Plus, we solely worked on print ads," he said.

"While at the school I also worked closely with and became fond of Professor Brett Robbs. It was purely a coincidence that he was now going to be teaching the campaigns class that I thought I could give back to. I proposed my plan of having the students work on the advertising campaign for a musical artist that I manage, Keaton Simons." (www.keatonsimons.com)

One receptive and happy professor later, it was a done deal.

"What appealed to me the most," Robbs said, "was that Jared wanted the focus to be on new media. We don't do nearly enough in that area, but it's one that students play in a lot. It's a chance for them to show their expertise."

Levy said the reason this became such an attractive project for Robbs and his Advanced Campaigns class is that CBS Records wasn't planning to use only print and other traditional advertising media, but also enter new realms of new media marketing. It is the area in which Levy now spends most of his time with his viral marketing startup company, Subset M (www.subsetm.com).

Robbs and Levy were on the same page. "New media is where I see advertising going," Levy said. "I thought that if we could throw these talented students into the pool to see if they could swim, there is a chance to come out with some ground-breaking, very forward-thinking ideas. That is exactly what we got."

Starting fall semester, students in Robbs' class developed materials for the early June release of Simons' debut CD. Students presented their work in December to Levy, Simons and Larry Jenkins, the executive vice president and general manager of CBS Records.

"They not only loved the work, "Robbs said, "but CBS Records, Simons' label, wanted to produce a number of the ideas."

"We have some of the students finishing up a few of the projects for me now," Levy said. "Each has a viral element so that not only is the messaging effective, consistent and attractive, but it encourages word-of-mouth advertising."

Student Chris Znerold is working on a Flash banner for the album release on June 10. The album is titled "Can You Hear Me," so Znerold and his group came up with the concept of creating a banner with Simons seemingly banging on the glass shouting "Can You Hear Me" to the backing track from the album. Seniors Hailey Lowe ('08), Matthew Davidow ('08) and Maggie Lowry ('08) have been working on some original ideas, Levy said.

"One is a video campaign in which actors are shown to be stressed by different situations and then calmed by the smooth stylings of Keaton Simons. There's also a guitar banner that plays the notes as you mouse over the strings," he said.

"The CU students are coming up with effective ways to message, guess who, college students. That's the beauty of this class, and that's the beauty of being able to provide these very talented students the opportunity to have their work used in a real-world situation."

Larry Jenkins, president of CBS Records, praised the students' work.

"I couldn't believe the talent in that classroom," he said. "This is something that music labels have talked about doing for years, but no one actually utilizes the college students to break through to that demographic. They came up with some very effective branding and marketing ideas that we will definitely be using for Keaton Simons."

Robbs said that combining what students learn in the Advertising program with the skills they acquire in CU's Technology, Arts and Media Program was the key to the project's success.

"It truly couldn't have gone better," Levy said. "That is why we've decided to do the project again with another one of my clients, 'Fields Of Fuel' (www.fieldsoffuel.com) this semester. 'Fields of Fuel' is a documentary about emerging fuel technologies that could be the solution to many of our world's problems, and it won the audience award at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival this January. I'm very excited about what the students can come up with to support a campaign of this magnitude."
musicjrod@yahoo.com