A photograph and the names of 10 Ohio State students were lit up in New York City’s Times Square last week.

“I thought there were only three types of people that got their picture up on Times Square: good-looking, wealthy or celebrity,” said Paul Sobecki, one of the OSU students. “I am none of the above, so it was awesome to know my picture was up there for a couple of days.”

The group of 10 students was one of three teams to win an American Eagle Outfitters marketing competition. The other finalists were from the University of Pittsburgh and Indiana University. Along with being on display in Times Square, the group was awarded $5,000, or $500 for each person.

At the beginning of Autumn Quarter, American Eagle executives came to OSU’s Fisher College of Business to ask the Honors Cohort program if it would join a competition to create a marketing campaign for the 2010 back-to-school jeans promotion. The executives asked seven different business schools, amounting to 17 teams participating in the competition.

The competition overlapped with the Honors Cohort program, which is one of three honors programs at Fisher. The program is a yearlong academic program that focuses on leadership, team building and presentation skills.

The cohort students used all of Autumn Quarter to complete their projects. Sobecki, a third-year in logistics and operations management, said the project was “essentially all we worked on for the class.”

The class was split into three teams of 10 people. The groups were given parameters to follow from American Eagle, Sobecki said.
Fellow group member Ankit Shah, a third-year in marketing and finance, said, “The big focus was on getting in touch with their core consumer: the 20-year-old college student.”

Shah and Sobecki’s team developed the winning campaign, “Do it in Denim,” because “we wanted to show that American Eagle jeans are very versatile,” Shah explained.

Among the ideas that came to fruition to demonstrate the jeans’ versatility is a “cool video” a group member made of college-aged students doing various activities in jeans. Sobecki said another member created a text message vote-off that gave consumers three choices where they wear their jeans: class, work, or going out at night. Ten people would be selected throughout the year and each would receive three free pairs of American Eagle jeans.

At the end of the quarter the 10-person group selected four members to travel to the American Eagle headquarters in Pittsburgh to present their finalized campaign to company CEO James O’Donnell and other high-ranking executives.

“They gave the presentation, and the executives’ jaws just dropped,” Sobecki said. “They said if any of us wanted a job, just call.”

Ankit, one of the four members who traveled, decided to take them up on the offer. He plans to accept a position as a merchandising intern this summer.

Some students are planning to use their winnings to pay for rent and tuition, but Sobecki has a different plan, “we will probably throw a little party for our cohort friends.”

There is no word whether American Eagle will actually use the Fisher cohort’s campaign, Sobecki said. “I hope they use some of our ideas, but I don’t know.”

Whether or not they use the group’s campaign, “it was a really cool experience,” Ankit said.

The photograph and names of the team from Fisher were shown from Feb. 21 to Feb. 24.

The members in the OSU finalist group are Paul Sobecki, Ankit Shah, Katie Deye, Seth Myers, Jessica Cantwell, Melissa McGhee, John Patti, Teryn Wessel, Jonathon Orlando and Kim Schmahl.