Walton Class Crafts Ad Campaign for Local Baker While Making a Difference in the Community

David Speer

Entrepreneur Daymira Baker (left) joins Creative Lense Advertising and Anne Velliquette (right), Walton clinical assistant professor.

Gaining real-world experience in a career that you love. Earning credit toward your major. Making a difference in your community.

All from one class project. Pretty cool, huh?

For the spring 2017 semester, Anne Velliquette, clinical assistant professor at the Sam M. Walton College of Business, assigned a service-learning project to her Integrated Marketing Communications class. Teams formed and assignments were made. The project developed full blown advertising campaigns — and the research and pitches that go along with it — to promote Rockin' Baker, a local mission-focused, benefit corporation bakery located in north Fayetteville.

Walton students Alexa Wood, Bethany McClain, Connor Clark, Demrie Lowry, Emma Meyer and Danielle Deats teamed up to create the Creative Lense Advertising agency for their team project and claim first place in the class competition.

"For this project we formed teams to create an advertising agency, which included coming up with an agency name, logo, and tagline, in order to prepare a campaign for our client, Rockin' Baker," said marketing major Demrie Lowry. "We were required to prepare three visual advertisements, a creative brief and we also created a social media plan."

"I intend to pursue a career in marketing and this project will definitely help me in my career. It allowed us to work firsthand with a real client who actually wants to hear our ideas and feedback," Lowry said. "I believe it will set us ahead because we have actually prepared a creative brief for a client based on their goals, which is exactly how it will be in a real-world setting."

The client — Rockin' Baker — prepares fresh breads such as traditional baguettes or sourdough, along with sourdough accented with nuts, herbs, olives, bananas, rye flour or chocolate. Tuesday through Saturday, it supplements baked goods with lunch sandwiches and salads.

When opening the doors of Rockin' Baker, a rush of warm bread fresh from the oven awakes your senses. The shop doesn't just smell good; it promotes good as well. The bakery is a registered nonprofit. It creates jobs and develops job skills for at-risk people who are interested in the culinary industry.

The team set out to reflect the social mission and fresh bread the bakery is known for.

"I learned how valuable it is to have something that sets your business apart," said Alexa Wood, a marketing major. "For Rockin' Baker, it's their social mission. There are various other bakeries in NWA, but no one has the same mission and values as her, and that's why people are loyal to her business. If you can provide something of value to customers, that's when you get their repeat business and loyalty."

­­

With themes of "rising up to empower others" and "natural ingredients for the natural state," Creative Lense team members promoted the bakery's fresh bread and its mission to train workers in artisan baking skills, safe food handling, quality control and other marketable skills.

"Students overall embraced the social mission of Rockin' Baker and did their best in fully understanding the challenges and limitations," said Daymara Baker, founder and chief executive officer of the bakery. "Some of them went beyond their assignment to provide additional support to grow the business." 

The second place team, Avenue Advertising, pitched ideas for their ad campaign and used "baking a difference" to project the good work Rockin' Baker does in empowering others through job training.

"Ultimately, we were trying to create a campaign that would be extremely low-cost, sustainable, and effective in order that Rockin' Baker can grow and increase capital stability," said Rachel Simpson, Avenue Advertising team member and a junior with a double major in marketing and accounting.

The integrated marketing project is a junior/senior level class and provides a hands-on experience to get students ready for the job market.

"It is a challenging yet very rewarding experience for the students. Ultimately, they are able to gain experience in two distinct advertising agency roles - that of the creative designer as well as the account executive," Velliquette said. "Many of them have the goal of working in some capacity for an ad agency. And even those that may have other plans, the real world experience provides great resume and job interview material for the students. Many past students have told me how proud they were of their work and that during interviews, it helped them to land an internship or job."

To learn more about Rockin' Baker, visit rockinbakeracademy.org on the web or on Facebook under RockinBaker. The bakery is located at 3761 Mall Avenue in Fayetteville.