A team of three Kent State advertising major students within the School of Journalism and Mass Communication have been selected to compete as finalists in the Effie Competition next week.

Matt Varga and Emily Wahl—two recent graduates—as well as junior Ellie Schering worked throughout the course of the spring semester to develop an integrated marketing campaign for V8+Energy.

Effie, a non-profit organization focused on promoting effective advertising and marketing communications through various multimedia platforms, hosts a collegiate competition each year for students to take part in nationwide.

The Collegiate Effie competition provides participants with a chance to create marketing communication cases that address real world challenges for marketers, according to the organization’s website.

This year’s brand names for the competition were Kleenex and  V8+Energy. Teams were asked to create a marketing campaign for one of the two brand names’ items.

The Kent State team chose to compete in the V8+Energy Brand Challenge. The goal of the challenge was “to develop an integrated, multi-channel marketing campaign designed to encourage the target audience to tryV8+Energy by convincing them that there is an energy drink from V8  that works and is healthy & delicious,” the competition website stated.

Although Kent State students have been competing Collegiate Effie competition since 2013, this year is the first in which a team from the university has been selected as a finalist, according to a May 19 university news release. The team is one of two finalists announced.

Varga, Wahl and Schering will present their campaign to the V8+Energy brand team next Tuesday in New Jersey.

Contact Alex Delaney-Gesing at [email protected].