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Written by Alyssa Remshak
When I got my driver’s license on my 16th birthday, it was the first time I really felt like I was growing up. I had reached my first big milestone, and I finally experienced the freedom of going wherever I wanted whenever I wanted. This gave me a sense of control over my life that I had never had before. And because I was finally in the driver’s seat on the road to adulthood, I couldn’t care less what kind of car I had. As long as I made it wherever I wanted to go, I figured it didn’t matter what took me there. That changed when I enrolled in the Advertising and Integrated Marketing Communications (AIMC) class my sophomore year at Johns Hopkins University.
AIMC or “The Ad Class,” as it is called in campus vernacular, is a class in which we work with an actual client as a full-service advertising agency. This semester, we are working with Acura to advertise for the Acura ILX 2017, a luxury performance vehicle perfect for young professionals who’ve landed that entry-level job and strive every day to get ahead, but still have a little fun. That’s when I realized a car is not just a machine that gets you from point A to point B; it represents how you’re getting to that next part of your day or that next stage in your life.
Really, there is no better car you could choose to focus on in this class. The Ad Class (as it is most students’ first experience as part of a full-service agency) is about being completely new to something, but diving in fearlessly. It’s about innovation and creativity, about the energy that springs from new ideas. It’s about being level-headed through disagreements and setbacks, and solving problems quickly enough to get right back on track. It’s about putting in hours of hard work so your finished product will turn out better than you ever imagined it would. And that’s everything the Acura ILX 2017 is about. Designed for you when you’re just starting out, it will take you through everything that goes into every journey—from landing your first job and working to land that upper level management position, to braving the dating scene until you find someone you want to be with for the rest of your life. It’s made for driven young professionals who dream of someday making it big, and its luxury is their reward for making it through every day on the way there.
After taking this class, I will never look at marketing the same way, nor will I look at cars the same way because neither one of them is simply a means to accomplish a goal; they represent the lifestyle of those who know they’re making it.