ADV 4399: Advertising Campaigns: Overview

Research Needs

Earl Young's Team has a fantastic personal story and an amazing spokesperson for their worthy cause!

However, they need some structure and organization from you, as well as creative support, to help them be more effective in three main areas: 

1. How do college organizations work?
2. What helps to ensure a successful swab drive?
3. Since students graduate, how do we have continuity on a college campus?

#1 is largely primary research -- you can provide expertise from your personal experience and from talking to or surveying students and organizations at other colleges.

#2 is partly organizational behavior, partly advertising, and partly psychology. 

#3 is partly organizational behavior, and partly learning best practices from other colleges. 

Organizational Behavior 

You are trying to answer questions here such as, how does a volunteer-run group effectively put on events? Consider search terms such as: 

• best practices, standards
• events, activities, event planning
• leadership, charter, structure, organization
• student organizations, student clubs, fraternities, sororities, volunteer groups, nonprofits, etc.

Advertising, Psychology and Psychographics

The advertising-specific sources will call it "psychographics", but the general resources may just call it "health psychology". Both will have some information on young people's opinions and attitudes toward donation in general and specifically stem cell donation. Again, brainstorm search terms: 

• young people, young adults, teenagers, adolescents, college students, university students, Gen Z, Millennials...
• stem cell donation, unrelated stem cell donation, blood donation, organ donation, volunteerism, altruism, civic-mindedness, etc.

Demographics

The U.S. Census is the best original source for nearly all demographic data. But some of the visualization and mapping tools below make it easier to view the data. 

While the U.S. Census does not ask about things like volunteerism or donation, it can reliably answer "big picture" questions like, how many people in a certain metro area are between ages 18-30, and are enrolled in college? 

General News

Search for other swab drives or similar events like blood drives in:

• Social media
• News.google.com
• General web searches

General news article searching is also useful to see how stem cell donation and blood donation are being discussed in the media. If you run into paywalls, use our subscription links below for access to multiple newspapers at once.