Ad Club at VCU Presidency
Problem
Free Pizza isn’t a strategy
VCU Students juggling jobs and deadlines don’t skip club meetings out of apathy. They skip them because an extra 60-minute lecture in a fluorescent room is a terrible trade for their time.
Unlock
Habits beat calendar invites
VCU Students commit to their friends and routines. If attending feels like a formal obligation, they’ll ghost. If it feels like an effortless hangout, they show up early.
Platform
See You at Ad Club
A behavioral habit disguised as the tagline. Swapping extracurricular energy for belonging and opportunity.
We built real worlds around real work
Our flagship sprints, where students tackle live agency briefs, were losing steam because they felt like extra homework. Instead of begging people to show up, I stopped selling the labor and turned the briefs into worlds worth stepping into.
The Strategy Sprint became a spy mission.
Briefs were handed out in classified folders and desk research became timed reconnaissance. Mining consumer insights turned into high-stakes undercover work. The client was Holiday Barn Pet Resorts. On pitch day, I showed up dressed as Scooby-Doo to run the room and get this mystery solved.
The Creative Sprint became a creative escape.
Scheduled right during midterms, we repositioned the weekend as an all-inclusive escape to sanctuary to unplug from class stress and build cool work. Richmond International Airport was the client, which made the getaway premise click effortlessly. Naturally, I hosted pitch day in a full airline pilot uniform.
We banned gatekeeping and delivered opportunity
Networking makes young creatives want to crawl inside a locker. So instead of transactional mingling, we brought in people from Capital One, CarMax, West Cary Group, Madison + Main, Campfire & Co, and GRITS Collective to get in the trenches with us.
The bar for success was how long the professionals and students lingered in the hallways talking over ideas after the lights turned off.
As the year was wrapping up, we scaled our annual student award show into a monster by hosting it for the first time inside the VCU Brandcenter. It was the largest showcase the club had ever seen with 80+ shortlisted pieces of student work judged by industry veterans.
We got up to some Mischief in New York City
Raised over $4,500 through industry partnerships to fund a blitz through New York City where 12 of us toured BBH, JOAN, and Mischief @ No Fixed Address.
Highlights include:
Accidentally dropping an agency thank-you gift on the ceramic tile of a Brooklyn bagel shop (a lesson in crisis management)
Herding sleep-deprived creatives through the subway system
Cramming a dozen of us into an Airbnb with two functioning bathrooms for a week
BBH pizza that rewired my standard for office catering
Sitting in conference rooms watching teams dissect the messy drafts behind campaigns we had spent the entire semester studying
And left behind a culture that outlasts my term
Rebuilt the executive board structure, overhauled the constitution, and locked in recurring agency partnerships.
Today, "See You at Ad Club" and "In Ad Club We Trust" is just how the room operates.
Average event attendance jumped from 9 to 29 people.
Social engagement
shot up +72%
Doubled overall membership
Flagship sprint sign-ups matched the entire previous year’s capacity in 8 hours flat.
Hit play for the breakdown 👇