Students in Dr. Rick Lytle’s senior-level marketing strategy class won first place in a marketing contest designed to promote the Chevrolet Cruze to college students through social media.

The College of Business Administration received $2,500 to cover costs of the project and each participating student was awarded a $100 Walmart gift card.

Lytle, dean of the College of Business Administration and professor of marketing, said the project gave his students an opportunity for real-world experience in social media marketing.

“I like to do hands-on projects with my students and classes,” Lytle said. “This sounded like a neat thing to give them some experience.”

Lytle said his students studied multiple forms of social media and determined YouTube was the best way to initiate a discussion about a product via social media.

“They decided, to drive the brand, they’d need a stimulating or hilarious video that would point viewers to a Facebook site or the website,” Lytle said.

He said his students created the idea of staging food fights on college campuses across the nation, with the Chevrolet Cruze playing a role in each video. Lytle said the winning project is good portfolio material for the students.

“The idea with the food fights was to say this is us and this is how we live,” Lytle said.

Jonathan Murata, senior marketing major from San Antonio, was one of the students involved in the project. He said the project provided experience necessary for success after graduation.

“We saw the opportunity to do something real-world, working on a product that didn’t have success with a group in that market,” Murata said. “Working for a well-known company was valuable. As business students, experience is key.”

Murata said the decision to create a YouTube video was a result of a group discussion about what would be an effective way to reach college students.

“We wanted to do something big that would grab attention with things like viral marketing. We determined YouTube was the best way to do that,” Murata said.

The video can be found at www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlrM6Yae4Xg.