Last March, four Tufts students launched a campaign to promote milk consumption on campus. Their effort, inspired by a contest sponsored by Rolling Stone and the milk industry, was successful as the Tufts team won, beating out teams from other schools across the country.
"We're really excited about it," victorious senior Maral Jeknavorian said.
For the milk campaign, Jeknavorian and the other participants from Tufts, sophomores Gabrielle Grode, Christina Luongo, and Amy Metzger, kept records of the consumption of milk in the dining halls on campus. The object of the campaign was to spread information about the benefits of milk and related topics like calcium and osteoporosis around campus.
The group put out a series of milk moustache ads featuring campus celebrities. To try to increase the milk consumption, they also supplied students with flavored powders to put into their milk since many students choose not to drink milk because they claim not to like the taste.
The final project the group submitted included a comprehensive account of their campaign at Tufts.
Teams from all the universities participating in the contest sent in a report after the campaign was finished. This showed how long the campaign was, what they did, how they reached the target audience, and if there were sustainable results of the campaign's efforts.
Jeknavorian said that their report was set up like a regular campaign that would be presented to an advertising agency. It included visuals, graphs, and charts displaying the results from Tufts.
Nationwide, there were four teams which qualified as winners. Stephanie Miness, the representative from Rolling Stone who contacted the group, could not tell them how many other students entered the contest. However, she said that the students presented an excellent campaign and that they should be proud.
The Tufts students found that their campaign increased milk consumption on campus by 25 percent.
"The students left comments about how happy and pleased they were with the campaign and how much they really appreciated the information," Jeknavorian said. "We got a good response."
The prize for the contest is an internship for two months during June and July at Rolling Stone. Winners also get an apartment in New York City to share and a $200 stipend each week to cover the cost of food and entertainment.
For the first week of the internship, the students will go to an advertising agency where they will learn about the business. After that they will work at Rolling Stone and US magazines to learn various aspects of advertising, including promotion and editing.
The only downside is that just one of the students from Tufts is allowed to take the internship. Out of the four Tufts students, one is going to Talloires and the other is applying to dental school, so they were already unable to go. The other two students had to flip a coin to choose.
Amy Metzger will take the internship in New York City. Most likely, her picture will appear in an upcoming issue of Rolling Stone.
"This was a really great idea that the milk industry had. It gave students on campus the impetus to run a campaign like this and it's really important," Jeknavorian said.
Jeknavorian also commented on the impact of the campaign on the health of Tufts students. "I hope that this encouraged other students on campus to get involved with other health prevention campaigns."
