Date of Defense


Date of Graduation




First Advisor

Karen Lancendorfer

Second Advisor

Greg Gerfen


Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc. asked teams of advertising majors across the nation to research, strategize, and design a new integrated marketing campaign for the NSAC American Advertising Federation Case Competition being held in April of 2018. The teams were provided some basic information on the company, the objective of the campaign, the target audience, and a total budget of $10 million. My team consisted of my classmates in MKTG 4810: Integrated Marketing Campaigns, a class taught by Dr. Karen Lancendorfer, a professor of Marketing and Director of the Advertising and Promotion Program at Western Michigan University.

As the first step in creating the campaign, we researched and created a media plan for Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc. that analyzed the company and the industry. We learned about the products offered by Ocean Spray, previous campaigns that the company had run, consumer opinions of the products, and how competitors were faring compared to Ocean Spray. I used various tools and calculations to decide which locations held the largest target market concentration and the largest juice consumption concentration, while others dissected the qualities of the consumers that our campaign was targeting.

Once this was complete, we had to choose what types of media we suggested the company use to reach its target market most effectively. We allocated a budget to each media type and decided how much of the target market would actually be exposed to the campaign through these media. I specifically aided in the creation of the official list of the best locations to target based on the overlap of target audience and the popularity of juice in that area. The schedule and timing of each social media element was carefully planned in consideration of various factors, and then the work of carefully constructing content for the twenty-page Plansbook began.

The major role I played in the overall campaign was leading the six Production team members in designing a Plansbook that accurately portrayed the Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc. voice, objective, and the campaign that my class created. I worked with my team to find the perfect color scheme, images, and layout, and had the final say on what was acceptable. Every page had to be constructed as the information was being delivered to the Production team because we had only about two months to complete it before the submission date. The Account, Research, Media Strategy, and Creative teams were all working on crafting and perfecting their various elements to be given to Production, so as the semester continued, the amount of work my team had grew because an increasing number of pieces were being completed. I was also in charge of ensuring the creative team made acceptable designs for the campaign, and I even lent a hand and constructed some of the advertising myself.

Once the Plansbook was complete, my team had to work with our classmates who would be presenting our campaign at the competition to create a PowerPoint presentation that matched the campaign look and tone and fit the speeches each presenter was giving. When we finally went to the competition, our campaign took second in the region.

Access Setting

Honors Thesis-Restricted