A senior marketing class presented a marketing campaign to a representative from the FBI Tuesday after being selected to help find intelligence analysts.

Kelsey Delagardelle of Edventure Partners, a company that links clients with universities for marketing campaigns, said CSU East Bay was chosen for the task of finding intelligence analysts for the FBI because of location.

“The FBI needed intelligence analysts from this specific area,” said Delagardelle.

The students in Professor Norman Smothers’ senior marketing class were eager to work on the project.

“We liked it because it separated us from the normal boring polling that most classes ask for with presentations that don’t have immediate possible job outcomes like ours did,” said Aron Merrel, a student in the class.

Smothers allowed his students to take the lead on the project so they could “learn by doing” something he says is a “hot thing in teaching, but is very controversial.”

Controversial or not, Merrell found the opportunity very beneficial because the class had “real world” deadlines and goals to meet.

The class was split up into five groups—finance, advertising, public relations, campaign strategies and implementation and research—that met in and out of class to prepare how to approach the job search.

Students posted flyers, handed out brochures at tabling events paired with current FBI agents, created a website with information about the position and ways to apply and did classroom presentations—a tactic the class found to be most effective.

A company was created in the A company was created in the class, called Integrated Communication Opportunities (ICO) Agency, with a logo and a slogan so that their marketing techniques would be associated with a visual.

“East Bay is on a quarter system, so that makes it hard to be successful,” said Delagardelle. “It’s impressive what the class did to get the word out.”

By the end of the marketing campaign, which was funded with $3,000 from the FBI, the class had raised CSUEB’s awareness of the job offer and had received 80 resumes for the position.

“I’m very impressed you were able to get a lot accomplished in such a short time,” said FBI representative Larry White, when the presentation was over.

White was particularly impressed with the website that had over 700 hits in just two weeks.

“Time management is important,” added White. “You have to juggle so many things at a time.”

White said that CSUEB was a good place for recruitment because of the diversity of the students and the languages that are spoken in the community.

“This school is unique,” he said. “There is always a need for diversity, a need for languages.”

The students, Smothers and White all expect to meet the goal of 100 resumes from applicants inquiring about the position in the weeks to come.

“Given that it is the holidays and finals are coming up, I think it’s really impressive we got so many resumes,” added White. “I think we can expect 20 or 30 more.”

Now that the project is over, Merrell feels proud that the class was able to do something like this for the campus community as well as for the client.

“It was nice to actually give people the opportunity to create a future right after school,” said Merrell. “This seems to be on most seniors’ minds.”