By Jack Keich
New business is the lifeblood of the public relations industry, and many professionals will tell you that there is nothing more exciting than winning. DePaul University’s Public Relations Campaigns course gives students the opportunity to experience the thrills and hardships that come with competing for new business in an agency setting, all before ever working for one.
I recently completed Professor Don Ingle’s campaigns course and already find myself missing the guest speakers, lectures, rehearsals and teamwork that culminated in my team’s final presentation to our client: DICK’S Sporting Goods. Notable clients from past classes include Heinz, Wendy’s, Starburst, Wrigley and Procter & Gamble.
As the autumn term began, we were introduced to our teammates. By the end of the first week of class, we had already become familiar with our client and their asks. Our primary research began only a few days later. This incredibly fast-paced environment is crucial in preparing students for jobs in the agency world. By the halfway point in the term, my team was already meeting for several hours per day. It felt like every idea that we had led to a bigger and better one, and our final campaign quickly came together through this exciting, collaborative process. Simply put, it was a lot of fun.
Becoming a Team
This highly efficient team dynamic was the result of Scott Farrell, former president of Golin’s global corporate communications, explaining his former agency’s teamwork model during his guest lecture. Using Golin’s G4 model, my team grew closer than any other I have worked in. Even as I write this article, weeks after the conclusion of the course, my phone continues to buzz with texts from my team. Not only did we create an expansive earned media campaign, but we also formed an enduring bond as personal friends.
Why does this matter? Well, winning new business is all about the people who are fighting to win it. While I am not minimizing the value of the creativity and research that inform great campaigns, the team itself eventually brings everything to life for the client. A team must be as excited about who they are going to be working with as they are about the campaign itself. A team’s genuine enthusiasm, passion and professionalism can separate two otherwise equal presentations. The more that our team grew close and acted as one, the easier it became to demonstrate our unwavering determination to win the client over.
For those preparing for their first new business pitch, here are three presenting tips that elevated my team’s performance:
- Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Practice your pitch in its entirety. Now do this as many times as possible. By the time that you present to the actual client, it will feel like a simple extension of your practice routine.
- Listen. Do not lose focus when you are not talking. Paying attention to what your teammates are saying better informs your transitions into your own material. This also allows one to note their teammate’s successes and shortcomings and quickly adapt without pausing or appearing disorganized.
- Talk to your audience. Getting through everything on the slide should never be your goal. Make deliberate eye contact with members of your audience and actively try to win them over on a personal level.
Professor Ingle emphasized these points from the class’s very first meetings, and the idea that winning new business is as much about selling your team as your ideas was undoubtedly one of my key learnings from the course.
Agency Support
We also worked directly with a national agency throughout the course: Praytell PR. Praytell’s Stephanie Shambo and Ellie Wharton provided counsel from an agency perspective. Shambo helped the class immensely by providing a strikingly thorough and comprehensive brief. We were quickly made familiar with the important aspects of our client’s image and what they wanted to accomplish. Meanwhile, Wharton’s involvement with the course was near constant. As either a guest speaker or judge, she was intensely involved in the course’s scheduled lectures and midpoint meetings.
With Wharton’s creative guidance and that of Praytell’s Olivia Knowlton, my team refined our campaign’s big idea. She suggested small adjustments, such as how to better connect our research to our campaign’s theme or ways to make our ideas more appealing to the media, which were instrumental to our final presentation’s success. What started as a vague group of ideas quickly became a campaign that made strategic use of multiple brand events and partnerships. As we repeatedly revised our campaign, my team’s behavior soon mimicked that of a group of employees at a public relations agency.
Presentation Day
When the day of our final presentation arrived, my team was confident and polished as we greeted the panel of judges. Our campaign was easy to follow and consistent throughout. Every piece of research directly informed our decisions. As I look back on it now, the course’s layout deliberately molded my classmates and I into exceptional presenters and team members.
The pedigree of the judges assembled to assess my class’s campaigns was unbelievable. Three communications professionals from DICK’S Sporting Goods’ corporate office were present on Zoom. All of a sudden, we were legitimately facing our real-life client, not just completing a class project. Former Chairman/CEO of Golin, Rich Jernstedt, sat between prominent PR veteran Ron Culp, and the Founder and CEO of Praytell PR, Andy Pray. Wharton and Shambo accompanied Pray, who would later tell my class that our campaign recommendations were far better than most agency new business presentations. The Dean of DePaul’s College of Communication, Lexa Murphy, and Kelley Chu, director of the public relations and advertising program, joined us as well.
Despite possessing a number of weighty titles, my class’s audience was truly invested in every team’s pitch. As I spoke directly to the row of judges, I felt the undivided attention of each of them. Simply having the chance to present to such a knowledgeable and experienced group of professionals was an amazing opportunity.
Final Reflection
Don Ingle’s campaigns course is certainly the best course that I have been a part of at DePaul. By the time that the ten-week term was over, I almost forgot that DICK’S Sporting Goods was not actually my client. The structure, pace and content of the course are designed to give students direct experience with the agency approach to winning new business.
As my classmates and I prepare to search for full-time agency roles, it is hard to imagine many experiences more immediately applicable than DePaul University’s Public Relations Campaigns course. This sentiment is one that is shared by students, educators and employers alike.
“I’ve had the pleasure of working with Professor Ingle and this class nearly 10 times now, across just as many clients, and I’m consistently impressed by what the student groups come up with,” said Stephanie Shambo, vice president of Praytell PR. “Activating against a real comms brief not only puts the principles they learn in class into practice, but necessitates they think past the ideas and consider how they would actually bring their ideas to life. This balance of insight-driven creative ideas and execution that brings the strategy to life prepares the students exceedingly well for a career in public relations – and we’re lucky to count several DePaul alum amongst our ranks at Praytell. I’m already looking forward to next quarter!”
Jack Keich is a senior at DePaul University majoring in public relations. He is a member of DePaul’s PRSSA chapter and recently joined the planning committee for their 2024 district conference,