Five students on Cal State Long Beach’s Bateman Team will travel to Atlanta next month to compete as finalists in a national competition for the Public Relations Student Society of America.
The Bateman Team finished as one of three finalists for its “Pay Like a Champion” campaign on behalf of its client, Popmoney, a personal payment service company. This is the first time the team has finished as a finalist since 2008.
Bateman Team adviser Joni Ramirez said the competition is “like the Super Bowl of public relations.”
For the competition, in which 51 teams participated, students drafted a proposal and then conducted research to plan, implement and evaluate a complete public relations campaign, according to the PRSSA website. Teams completed research and planning from November to January and executed their plans in February.
The CSULB Bateman Team is formed each year for the competition and this year’s team includes Andrea Sampson, Francisco Aguirre, Vannyda Thach, Brittney Arriola and Mariana Vaca, who are all senior journalism majors, emphasizing in public relations.
The team members said they are thrilled about the success of their campaign and will continue to put in more long nights to prep for the presentation in Atlanta.
“We’re stoked,” Arriola said. “We all are in shock that we’re really going to Atlanta. We’re really going to compete and represent Cal State Long Beach.”
For the campaign, the team created “Popgirl,” a campus celeb and mascot, a commercial, wrote and produced an original song and held an event to break a Guinness World Record.
In its attempt to break the Guinness World Record, the Bateman team aimed to pop more party poppers than the current world record of 536 at a CSULB basketball game in February.
“Our lives were turned absolutely upside down with the amount of work we had to put into it,” Sampson said. “Getting that call was validation for us.”
Students in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication who were selected for the Bateman Team worked alongside Ramirez in the fall and received course credit for their work.
“I knew the students had produced an excellent campaign, and I was very excited to learn that they will be recognized nationally for their hard work over the past six months,” Ramirez said.
Other universities that will compete in Atlanta are Loyola University New Orleans and the University of Florida. The only other California school to place in the competition was Chapman University, which received an honorable mention, according to the PRSSA website.
“Even though we thought we were doing well, we didn’t know how well we were doing, whether we were in the bottom of the pack or the top,” said Vaca when describing her excitement about making it as a finalist. “We didn’t have anything to compare [our project] to. We are in the top three with two other schools who win every single year.”
Chris Burnett, chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, said he is proud of the team’s efforts.
“The students worked hard, and they have great direction, which paid off. Everyone in the faculty is really excited for the Bateman team,” Burnett said.
Great job on the article. Your proud dad.