VCU Prepares for Third CreateAthon onCampus

By Mike Porter

More than 50 students at Virginia Commonwealth University will spend 24 consecutive hours completing marketing and advertising projects for free for 10 area nonprofits beginning Thursday morning.

Student volunteers from VCU and Virginia State University will participate in the third CreateAthon onCampus, a marathon of student-generated creative work designed to help nonprofit organizations with little or no resources with advertising and marketing initiatives.

Students will begin working at VCU on Thursday at 8:30 a.m. and continue through the day and night on their assignments. They will present their projects to their clients on Friday morning. Student team leaders then will help guide the work through production, partnering with local vendors to eliminate production costs for the nonprofits.

In 2008, VCU became the first university to launch a CreateAthon program, which has been used by professional advertising agencies around the country.

“At the end of the day, I want students to have as much real world experience as possible,” said Peyton Rowe, associate professor of advertising at VCU and director of the project. “They’ll meet with clients, write creative briefs and work with vendors. They’ll work extremely hard, have fun and test themselves creatively.”

Student teams have been planning for this week’s work since January. Participants include undergraduate students from the VCU School of Mass Communications, VCU School of the Arts and VSU’s art and design program and graduate students from the VCU Brandcenter. In addition to the students, local professionals will volunteer during the creative blitz, serving as mentors to the teams.

More than 83 nonprofits applied to participate in the program. Organizations were selected based on the organizations’ limited resources and how well their needs matched the students’ expertise and the 24-hour creative window.

Participating nonprofits this year include Boaz & Ruth, Central Virginia Legal Aid Society, Equality Virginia, the James River Association, Maynard Childhood Cancer Foundation, Prevent A Litter, Special Olympics of Virginia, William Byrd Community House, Virginia Breast Cancer Foundation and Virginia Water Safety Coalition.

CreateAthon onCampus is made possible through support from the Virginia Non-Profit Housing Coalition.

For more information, visit http://createathononcampus.org/vcu/.