By: Mary Sosebee

HYPE is a student-run marketing agency that represents 6 businesses in the High Point community. Though the agency has only been operating for this year, significant progress has been made with each client’s PR campaign.

“We are really excited to help them with their social media content, advertising and marketing strategies,” said Sami MacDonald, a HYPE member. “So far we have done a great job working with them.”

Similar to a professional PR firm, each team of students pitched a marketing strategy for their potential clients to the HYPE leadership board. The board then assigned each team a client to work with for the semester.

The High Point Rockers baseball team and HPU’s School of Communications are two of HYPE’s biggest clients. The agency is currently in the development stage of graphics and social media campaigns that will be implemented on clients’ social media platforms. For HYPE students, these tasks are more than just graded assignments–they are real-world experiences.

“We hope to continue to provide hands-on, experiential learning opportunities to students through HYPE,” said HYPE advisor Robin Lindner. “It’s important for us to help prepare them for some of the real-world scenarios they will face when beginning a career in communication.”

In addition to managing clients’ needs, students are also working to promote the HYPE brand in hopes of making the agency well known throughout HPU and the surrounding community. A specific team of students, including MacDonald, manage HYPE social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

“I have been working on gathering content for social media and communicating with our teams on how work with their clients is going,” said MacDonald. The diligent work HYPE students are doing now is not only to ensure their current clients’ success, but to prepare the agency to be a long-term operation.

“I think HYPE is going to skyrocket,” said HYPE member, Caroline Ford. “We are still figuring out the kinks to see what works and what doesn’t, but I think we are really going to continue to expand. It’s going to be something everyone on campus knows about.”

As the agency expands, its priority is to maintain current clients while adding new local businesses to the client list.