Every year, the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) holds the National Bateman Case Study Competition. Universities and colleges across the country are invited to enter student teams to launch a full public relations campaign for a client. In last year’s competition, Montclair State University’s team placed in the top 10 out of 60 participating schools.
This year, Montclair State’s team features five students: Emma Haskell, Riley Silvester, Sarah Potter, Matthew McDonald and Jennifer Barrales-Solis. Their challenge is to create a campaign for ACCESS Newswire, a global communications and press release distribution platform. This year, ACCESS Newswire launched Access Academy, a platform that offers students more professional experience.
Emma Haskell and Riley Silvester, this year’s communications lead and creative director for Montclair’s team, broke down their campaign.
“Our campaign is ACCESS Academy,” Haskell said. “We branched off, took that platform, and are using that for our students to gain more leverage on campus.”
The campaign, which will run from Feb. 2nd to March 2nd, allows students to get hands-on experience working in the professional world.
The "ACCESS Academy" team wearing their matching shirts to spread awareness of the campaign throughout the month. Photo courtesy of Professor Erin Weinberg
Haskell and Silvester are seniors at Montclair State. Haskell has always gravitated towards public speaking and began her freshman year as a communications and media studies major. That year, she entered and won a public speaking competition.
“That pushed me in the direction of PR,” Haskell said. “I learned that I could do more with social media, and being a face for corporations that I could work for.” Now, Haskell is a public relations major with a minor in business.
Silvester had a similar experience.
“I started as a communications student, and then I took Intro to PR and Advertising,” Silvester said. “I felt like it was my calling.”
Haskell hopes to work with a PR agency after graduating. She is grateful that the team’s work in the competition mirrors working professionally and feels confident in the resources that ACCESS Newswire offers.
“Being able to tie all of what I’ve learned at Montclair into a professional career is the goal,” Haskell said. As the team’s communications lead, Haskell shines most with managing the campaign’s image, and her favorite part of the campaign is “being able to work with people that [she] hasn’t worked with in this type of setting before.”
The "ACCESS Academy" team hosted a Super Bowl tabling event for students to learn more about the campaign. Team member Riley Silvester ('26) holds up a QR code for students to guess how many footballs were in the jar for a chance to win a prize. Photo courtesy of Sarah Potter
Silvester is drawn to the creative aspects of the team’s efforts. Her role is geared towards more visual aspects of the campaign as she works with their logo and tools like Canva.
Both students appreciate the opportunity to receive hands-on experience. “[It’s] exciting to see where the campaign started, and where we’re heading,” Haskell said. “We’re all graduating soon, so this is great for getting out into the real world and knowing what to expect.
“I love having gone from planning it from scratch to seeing it start to play out as our campaign launched,” Silvester said.
Towards the end of the campaign, the team will be holding a crisis communications course using tools from ACCESS Newswire to put together their own competition. The competition will assess which team can find the best strategy in a crisis.
“Being able to incorporate the platform into a real-world situation, or a class scenario, is super cool,” said Haskell. She and Silvester are eager to demonstrate how their clients’ tools can be utilized in a classroom setting.
Despite the anticipation around the competition, the ACCESS Academy campaign is not without its challenges.
“Because there are a lot of people pulling different ideas in, we have to learn how to be original and stray from what everybody else would be producing,” Haskell said. “We have to turn on our creativity and pull from areas that our competitors won’t be.”
The "ACCESS Academy" team with Pebbles at their Valentine's Day tabling event. Photo courtesy of ACCESS Academy team
Still, Haskell is sure that Montclair State’s team is doing great at standing out against the other teams and campaigns from previous years.
This is an area where Silvester, as the creative director, feels she needs to have the most confidence.
“One thing is trusting myself and my ideas,” Silvester said. “It can be easy to have an idea and not think anything of it or know how it’s going to play out,” Silvester notes that working with the campaign strengthened her self-trust.
Haskell and Silvester look forward to the ways their campaign will prepare them for professional settings.
“I’m excited to see the full effect of what we can do as ACCESS Academy,” Haskell said.
“I think this campaign is as much for my strengths as it is for my weaknesses,” Silvester said.
