The Center for Student involvement is using Facebook to promote their new commercials, giving students the opportunity to vote on which commercial will be shown at campus events.

Students have until early next week to cast their vote.

Timeka Rashid, assistant dean of students/director at CSI, said the commercials came about as a way to further promote CSI.

“We’re working with Teleproductions to really create something that grabs the students,” she said.

Alex Ulbricht, graduate assistant at CSI, said the reason for putting the commercials on Facebook is to get them out to the students. Ulbricht and Rashid stressed the importance of getting student feedback.

“We want to know what is going to eye pop for you, to put down your cell phone and be like, ‘Oh, CSI’,” Rashid said.

The two new commercials each follow one person through a party in the Rathskeller, who picks up parts of different conversations, all about CSI events.

The winning commercial will be shown before concerts, comedy shows, speakers, Kent State football games and Real Late Reels. At the end of each commercial, there will be an advertisement for a future event.

“Not only is it promoting CSI as a whole department, but it’s promoting a big highlight of an upcoming event,” Rashid said.

Shane Roach, director and producer at Kent State Teleproductions, helped to direct, produce and edit the CSI commercials.

“It’s kind of a daunting task to try to find an efficient and economical way of getting all the information out there,” he said. “We have about three minutes to tell (students) all that CSI wants them to know.”

Roach said the way the commercials were created is to get the most information as possible to the students.

“You could pick up at any point in this video and get good information,” he said. “If you’re not paying attention at the beginning, you’re not going to be lost by the time you get to the end.”

Roach said students and focus groups were called in to help with the formation of the script.

“I wanted the dialogue to reflect actual conversation that would be believable to the students,” Roach said.

He said students were also brought in at other phases of production in order to stay focused on the audience — the student body.

Nathan Edwards, senior broadcast news major, was the narrator and host of the party in the commercials.

“It was a pretty quick, easy gig that was fun to do,” Edwards said.

He said he thinks trying to get students involved on campus is an ongoing struggle for CSI.

“We’re on a campus where, frankly, I don’t think students will do anything that is organized for them,” Edwards said. “Students are pretty free-willed, and they want to do what they want to do … I don’t think a lot of students take advantage of (CSI) because they are busy and have their own agendas.”

However, he said he thinks the commercials will help.

“There are a lot of pretty cool things that happen on campus,” Edwards said.

Students can find the commercials on the wall of the CSI Facebook page, and also under the discussions tab.

Contact Caitlyn Callahan at [email protected].