Dealing with delicate topics in cooperation with industry

Exploring new possibilities to reach wider consumer base is one of the priorities for product oriented companies. Advertising agencies can be very expensive with no guaranties that sales are going to expand substantially. Other potential sources of fresh ideas are youth and students. Such cooperation between industry and educational institutions can be very productive and benefiting all stakeholders: (1) companies can obtain fresh results at a reasonable cost with potentially similar results as agencies provide, (2) students receive recognition and earn some financial or other rewards and (3) educational institution serves its purpose in build long term relationships. The problem with such cooperation can come with delicate topics such as alcohol, tobacco, religion, nudity etc. The problem is not the topic itself, but how to combine these topics with pedagogical approaches to achieve aims students should get out of courses. As an example, it would be inappropriate to demand students go naked in front of a camera or become heavily intoxicated in the process of creating ads for alcoholic beverages. On the other hand there are problems with student motivation, personal ideology, social standards, stereotypes and other. As such it is important, how the cooperation is presented to students and the task has to be carefully chosen. Discussing these problems can be part of the educational process since they are going to deal with same issues in professional careers. Nevertheless it is still a learning process and students have to acquire knowledge. As a case study we will take a look at cooperation with an underwear company. Students had to prepare short ads for their youth lingerie product line. At the beginning of the project a strong negative attitude was present among mostly female students, and quite the opposite by their male colleagues. During the creative process students eventually realized what exactly they should create and at the end a very positive story came - ut for all involved.