Client: UMM/Pioneer Public Television, 2002-2003

Project Overview:
Each year, over 200 high school students from around the region participate in Academic Challenge, a television quiz show sponsored by the University of Minnesota Morris and aired on Pioneer Public Television. Teams go head-to-head with opposing schools, and the winning team of the annual tournament receives an all-expense paid trip to compete in the the National Knowledge Bowl tournament held the following summer.

Since the University of Minnesota Morris is the tournament's sole sponsor, we decided to develop a series of 60-second television ads to insert within each episode. Each ad used the University's 'Discover UMM' theme and featured a UMM student who discovered an unique quality about the University. In total, there were 16 ads developed for the series.

My Role in Project:
I was asked to develop an ad for the University of Minnesota Morris to be used for the Academic Challenge series. We decided to use the 'Discover UMM' theme due to a very successful project we developed months earlier for broadcast on Fox Sports Net.

We worked with the UMM Admissions Office to get a list of UMM students who were from hometowns within the large viewing area of Pioneer Public Television. After shooting interviews in the student's own setting, I produced and edited each ad for broadcast.

Because of the positive feedback we received, we used these ads for two seasons of Academic Challenge.

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