On Tuesday, Amy and I had the privilege of attending and speaking at EXPLO. EXPLO provides various summer enrichment programs for high school who are bright, curious, and interested in exploring various career paths from around the globe. There are numerous programs to choose from and a variety of campuses that host the students such as Yale, Wellesly and St. Marks.
The group we were invited to speak at was the EXPLO Marketing program at Yale University. This program was a 2 week summer marketing course for high school students who are in grades 10 – 12. The students are spending their time reviewing various case studies, working with professional mentors, and then developing a final project which is to a pitch product to a panel of professionals in New York City this coming week. This particular class of students Amy is speaking to were pitching a concept for a new line of sneakers.
Elements was sought out as speakers for our marketing and design expertise. They asked us to share a product case study to help guide them through a specific part of their pitch process. We choose to speak about our client, TEA-RRIFIC! ICE CREAM® and take them through the cycle from research to completed designs. This information helped to give them information they can use when creating their final pitch.
We, of course, handed out samples of the product, {which were generously donated by our client}, and then were hit with a slew of marketing, design and pitch related questions from the crowd, who – by the way – all loved the ice cream!
It was very impressive to see high school students taking the initiative to start exploring their career paths at such a young age. All of the students were excited and ready to learn and we were happy to help and empower them with knowledge they could immediately implement as they choose their own career paths.
As one of the program directors commented as we left, “I think you persuaded some of our students to go into graphic design today!”.
To which we replied, “Mission accomplished.”
~Allyson
