FIR NW Agency

FIR NW is the student-run advertising agency at Portland State University. Students working at FIR have already chosen their advertising discipline(s), and they work with real clients, real budgets, and real deadlines.

My role at FIR was in Strategy (as an Account Planner) and Digital Media. Because client work in FIR typically spans more than one school term, all client work was already underway from the previous term when I joined the agency, so I stepped in as needed to provide strategic and digital media support for ongoing projects.

Projects I was involved with include:

Ooligan Press

Ooligan Press is a publishing press for students pursuing a master’s degree through the Department of English at Portland State University.

The project goal was to increase the number of applications to the program. When I joined FIR, my team was finalizing a targeted digital ad campaign, and I assisted in reviewing the final animations for the video ads and was on hand for Q&A at the client pitch.

Self-Promo

FIR performs self-promo each term to recruit students to apply to FIR for the upcoming term. At the time I joined, all the planning and creative work had been done for the Valentine’s Day event, so along with answering student questions about the organization, I also volunteered to be a hawker, pulling in students to

“Step right up, Ladies and Gents!
Get your frrrrrree valentines right here!

FIR Brand Platform

Students at Portland State University join FIR to gain real-world experience, create work for their portfolios, and use this experience to help them land their first advertising jobs after college.

I commented that from a hiring managers’ perspective, FIR was not fully supporting its students and recommended we form a team to analyze the issues and find an actionable solution.

I researched student-run ad agencies at other universities across the US to see how they presented themselves online, as well as to learn what kinds of educational events they organized for their students. While FIR stood above most of these agencies, we could clearly see areas needing improvement. The most glaring issue we identified was that FIR had no cohesive brand identity.

To solve this problem, we held several meetings to develop a brand platform for the agency. During this project, we defined the brand identity, brand promise, and voice.

Our results are shown in the images below.