Advertising: Consumer Behavior & Campaign Strategy

• Analyze how advertising influences culture and consumer behavior

• Research a local organization, community issue, and target audience

• Apply segmentation and positioning to a campaign strategy

• Evaluate factors behind campaign success or failure

• Create advertising assets across multiple media

• Present and defend a community-centered campaign

By the end of the course, students will be able to:

• Analyze how audience insight and positioning shape campaign strategy

• Develop coordinated advertising across appropriate channels

• Evaluate and present a campaign using strategic and creative evidence

Students leave with a multi-channel campaign and experience applying advertising strategy to a real Ann Arbor community context.

Advertising strategy connects creative work to evidence about an audience. Market research and segmentation help students move beyond messages intended for everyone, while positioning clarifies why a particular organization or idea should matter.

Evaluating campaign effectiveness adds accountability. Students consider whether creative choices support the objective and how different media work together. These skills strengthen research, writing, visual communication, teamwork, and the ability to make purposeful choices in media-rich environments. Together, the work reinforces careful reasoning and the ability to revise a conclusion when new evidence changes the picture.

This course is for high school students who have completed 9th, 10th, 11th, or 12th grade and are interested in advertising, consumer behavior, brands, social issues, design, or digital media. It fits students who want to combine audience research with creative execution.

Participants should be ready to research a local organization, collaborate, create in more than one medium, and explain how their choices support a strategy. Curiosity about culture and community will strengthen the work.

Based on students surveyed in Summer Discovery’s 2026 program at the University of Michigan.

Programs on the University of Michigan campus give high-school students the experience of exploring an academic interest in Ann Arbor, a college town where campus and community life blend together. Tree-lined streets, downtown bookstores and cafés, the Nichols Arboretum, and trails near the Huron River create different ways to experience the setting beyond class.

Students learn alongside peers, navigate a large and active campus, and gain independence through everyday choices in a new environment. The experience helps students understand what university life can feel like while giving them space to deepen an interest without having every next step decided. For families, the program offers a meaningful combination of academic depth, community, personal growth, and clearer direction about what a student may want to study or pursue next.

Advertising professionals work in strategy, research, account management, copywriting, design, media, analytics, and production. Nonprofits and local businesses use the same disciplines to reach supporters, customers, and communities with limited attention and resources.

Students practice an integrated version of that work by researching an Ann Arbor audience, developing strategy, creating across channels, and presenting a campaign. The experience offers a grounded view of careers in advertising, marketing, communications, design, content, and community engagement. It also shows how specialists collaborate across roles and communicate important decisions to colleagues, clients, or the public.