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Create and optimize a digital campaign in this 2-week advertising academy for high school students at UCLA Anderson.
Rated 4.3 out of 5 for classroom experience by students who took this course in 2026.
Course Description
A campaign needs more than content to fill a feed. Decide who you want to reach and what you want to change, then make creative choices that serve that purpose.
In this course you will study how entertainment, sports, media, and consumer brands use positioning and storytelling to earn attention. Define an audience and objective, develop campaign concepts, and plan content for different platforms. Writing ad copy and creating sample visual and video assets turn the strategy into something people can see.
Influencer partnerships offer another way to extend a message. Reach, engagement, and conversion give you different ways to judge whether it works. Cases, workshops, critique, and revision help you connect creative decisions with business goals and explain what you would change.
Your individual digital campaign portfolio focuses on a selected brand or entertainment property. Bring together an audience profile, objective, positioning idea, channel plan, sample content, measures of performance, and recommendations informed by data. Present the strategy and the reasoning that holds it together.
This two-week full-day high school academy takes place at UCLA Anderson School of Management in Los Angeles, California. The program is developed by UCLA Anderson and offered in partnership with Summer Discovery. The academy is available to residential and commuter students.
What You Will Do
• Define a target audience, campaign objective, and brand position
• Analyze digital campaigns from entertainment, sports, media, and consumer brands
• Plan platform-specific content and write persuasive ad copy
• Create sample visual and video assets for a campaign
• Interpret reach, engagement, and conversion metrics
• Build and present an individual digital campaign portfolio
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, students will be able to:
• Develop a campaign strategy for a defined audience and objective
• Create platform-appropriate content supporting a clear brand position
• Use campaign metrics to recommend improvements
You’ll leave with your individual digital campaign portfolio and a certificate of completion.
Why Digital Advertising Skills Matter
Digital advertising requires both creative judgment and analytical discipline. Defining an audience sharpens research and empathy, while positioning and message development teach students to make purposeful choices rather than simply produce more content.
Performance data adds another layer. Comparing reach, engagement, and conversion helps students test whether a campaign is working and explain why they would change it. These habits are useful in school projects, team decisions, presentations, and any setting where an idea must connect with a specific audience and produce a measurable response.
Who Should Attend?
For students who have completed 9th, 10th, 11th, or 12th grade.
If you notice the strategy behind a social post or enjoy making content for a particular audience, this academy gives those interests a business context. Campaign discussions, creative workshops, revision, and basic performance data let you try both the ideas and the analysis behind advertising.
Students must demonstrate academic achievement with mostly A and/or B grades in their high school courses.
Recommended by More Than 4 out of 5 Students
Based on students surveyed in Summer Discovery’s 2026 UCLA high school program.
Your Summer at UCLA Anderson School of Management
UCLA Anderson’s Digital Advertising and Brand Strategy Academy places students in Los Angeles, where entertainment, media, sports, technology, and creator businesses compete for attention every day. Led by UCLA Anderson, the academy connects consumer insight, positioning, creative strategy, and campaign decisions to a city where brands are continually built, tested, and reinvented.
Students work through case studies, workshops, team projects, and a capstone while developing practical skills in analysis, communication, and presentation. Residential life and activities extend the student experience beyond the classroom. Students live alongside peers, gain independence, and leave with a clearer view of how marketing works in practice and whether advertising, brand strategy, media, or business may fit their future study and career interests.
After successfully finishing this course, you will be awarded a certification completion for your accomplishment.
*This is a preview, not what you will receive