By RFD Radio Network
DALLAS – Some Illinois State University students want to be marketing wizards, and tested what they learned at a national competition in Dallas to market food and other agricultural products.
Illinois State’s student chapter of the National Agri-Marketing Association, or NAMA, brought home four awards, including student chapter of the year. The ISU group beat out the NAMA student group at the University of Illinois and 30 other ag programs at colleges and universities nationwide.
“It’s great coming here and seeing all your hard work that you put in over the past year pay off, especially in front of a crowd of 35 other major schools,” said Joey Keller, a junior from Waverly who competed on Team ISU.
Other students enjoyed the experience that can be translated to the real world.
“I am graduating in August,” said the ISU agri-marketing student chapter’s president, Amanda Diesburg of Paxton. “I’m starting to look toward my career and I definitely want to stay in marketing and focus on the communications aspect, maybe something in advertising, so we’ll see where that path goes.”
The Illinois State group spent nearly a year planning and practicing for the competition. They pitched “Mulligan’s milk-fed pork,” or hogs marketed to high-end restaurants, for what the group says is ‘nose-to-tail cooking.’ Their peers at other schools also voted the ISU NAMA chapter as the “team we’d call…if we landed in jail.”
