Academy of Finance Students Design Ads for Local Businesses

This year was the fourth year students in ’s Academy of Finance (AOF) took part in the “Design an Ad Program,” pairing 9th- through 12th-graders in teacher Brian McCarthy’s Intro to Business class with local businesses to gain real-life, hands-on experience in media and marketing and take an advertising project from concept to final design.

In early May, with an introduction to the program, some basic instruction on creating compelling and effective ads and the opportunity for five groups of students to meet with representatives from their assigned businesses, or “clients,” to gain an understanding of the type of message they wanted to convey in an online advertisement.

In subsequent weeks, the students and business representatives met twice more: once for the student ad teams to present their initial designs to their clients for feedback, and then to present their final ad designs for the clients to select.

“It’s a real collaboration between students learning about business and local community businesses,” AOF board member and business performance advisor Margaret Maclay, who started the program with AOF program director Linda Farrell a few years ago, said previously. “And the ads in the past have really been quite good. I think everybody was quite surprised. They were something they could actually use.”

Of this year’s final ads, Maclay said they once again “came out great.”

“The final session was really fun,” she said. “After the clients met with their ad team to provide final comments and review the edits, each team presented their final ad to the group.”

Included in each student presentation was the message the ad was intended to convey, what seemed to work well, challenges they faced along the way, any final adjustments and the top three lessons they learned taking part in the project, according to Maclay.

“The presenters did a great job and even got a little feedback on presentations skills,” Maclay said. “Following the presentations, the entire group voted for their favorite ad. It was very close but the Cartridge World monkey beat out the Kidsville News alligator by a tail. The clients are very happy with all the ads.”

Maclay added, “Mr. McCarthy reported that the students learned a lot and had fun working on the project; stay tuned for next year.”

Participating in the program this year were Diane Homer of Kidsville News, Michael Lettieri of Cartridge World, Leo Ranieri of Massage at Work, Ranee Weinstein of the Fort Lee Chamber of Commerce representing the Chamber's involvement in the taking place in Fort Lee in August and Maclay representing Women Inspiring Women.

You can see the final ad designs above with the names of the members of the team that designed them.