Defend True Blue

MTSU media students create mask-wearing PR campaign

by Gina Fann

Six MTSU School of Journalism and Strategic Media students have seen firsthand how public relations and advertising campaigns can help make a lifesaving difference to their community.

Knowing that everyone was aware of—and fatigued by—COVID-19 information as they prepared to return to campus in August 2020, the Safe Return Campaign team came up with a creative way to reinforce MTSU’s campuswide mask mandate.

“We realized that the fact-based messaging just [wasn’t] working,” said Bella Utley, a senior Advertising student, who was one of six top College of Media and Entertainment students on the project. Students were “bombarded with COVID-19 messaging,” Utley said. “ . . . This had to be concise, easy to digest, and hit on an emotional level for students.”

The team, led by professors Leslie Haines and Matt Taylor, also included recent graduates Sydney Clendening and Andrew Felts (Visual Communication), T. Chism (Advertising), and Nathaniel Nichols (Public Relations), along with rising senior Caitlin Davis (double-majoring in Public Relations and Agribusiness). Their extensive research in late spring and summer of 2020 showed them what would resonate with their target audience.

“We wanted to choose something that pushed forward a unique way to frame life with a mask . . . to implement it as a normal part of our lives and our lifestyles and making wearing a mask easy instead of annoying or strange,” Utley said. She and her colleagues found a simple, straightforward focus for their campaign: Tell students that mask-wearing is easier than the everyday challenges of parking, finding a spot to study, or remembering your ID, ending with “Wear Your Mask. Defend True Blue.”

Advertising major Bella Utley is featured on a Raider Xpress bus shelter sign on campus for an MTSU student public relations campaign. Fellow team member Andrew Felts (r), a Visual Communication major, helps Ed Arning, director of market development, install the poster.

Their plan used close-cropped photos of current students on yard signs, bus shelters, and digital screens scattered across campus, as well as videos, social media, buttons, and even text-only messages pasted onto high-traffic windows and doors—all incorporating the “True Blue” motto of community values MTSU has embraced since 2011.

“Students recognize that it is much different [than official University campaigns], which automatically creates a stronger sense of connection to the message,” Utley said. “Most importantly, it builds the community without saying, ‘We’re all in this together.’ ” Davis, who appeared in an Instagram video about the campaign, said,

“I’ve had professors in the past who like to joke about their classes, where they say that their class is so hard to pass, so they can even put it on the syllabus: ‘Remember, wearing your mask is going to be easier than passing my class!’ ”

MTSU’s mask mandate in campus buildings, lifted in May 2021, was instituted for the 2020–21 academic year. Rutherford County had a similar requirement during the peak of the pandemic and prior to widespread vaccines.

MTSU President Sidney A. McPhee praised the campaign, admitting to “shameless bragging” on the students. “I thought I was on Fifth Avenue at a PR firm that was selling your proposal to a company, and that’s without exaggeration,” the president said. “We really can’t put a dollar figure on the effort and the work that you all have done.”

The campaign fell under the School of Journalism and Strategic Media’s “capstone course” plan to give Advertising and Public Relations students real-world experience in their final semesters.

“Students work on a campaign with a client, often nonprofits in the community, the sort of thing that gives them a chance to apply the skills they’ve been learning,” Taylor said.

Team member Sydney Clendening, a Visual Communication major, poses next to a "Defend True Blue" promotional campaign sign featuring her photo.

The mask campaign offered hands-on experience and let the two professors focus on the students’ work and the product rather than grades.

“I always talk about design for the greater good, and I work with nonprofits,” Haines said, “and for the students to be able to see their work put into action and to have this actual end result and to be able to present to an executive board and the president of the University is great.

“I’m so impressed that MTSU gave the students this challenge and had enough confidence that they could pull it together.” Team member Sydney Clendening, a Visual Communication major, poses next to a “Defend True Blue” promotional campaign sign featuring her photo.