Before graduating and embarking on full-time advertising careers, six advertising students produced commercials for a TV network that airs in more than 4 million homes across the nation.

Launching its "Watch What You Love" campaign, the Longhorn Network – a partnership between The University of Texas at Austin and ESPN – aired the group's first commercial on June 18. The commercial, "Little Longhorn," features a father reading his daughter a bedtime story about a Longhorn football win.

After working with Michael Cramer's The Business of Sports Media course in the fall of 2012, ESPN Associate Director of Marketing Jill Husak spoke with Texas Program in Sports and Media Manager Christopher Hart about collaborating with advertising students. The next semester, advertising students pitched ideas, crafted scripts and arranged filming with the help of Lecturer Ryan Romero as their creative director.

"As students they're used to answering to this nebulous idea of what a brand is," Romero said. "In this case the brand is real, the people who represent the brand are real, and they have opinions that matter. Learning to develop and evolve your creative ideas to fit everyone's needs is huge. This group got a chance to do just that."

Husak said she was impressed with students' quality of work.

"The students presented a vast body of incredibly well-written work of agency quality," Husak said. "It was refreshing and energizing to work with these talented students. They delivered a final product we're all very proud of that has really resonated with Longhorn fans."

During the week of June 25, the students' second commercial will air. It features a group of men playing basketball – with each team member sporting one letter of the word "Texas."

Another ad, "Homesick," features a New York-based alumnus who moves a photo of the UT tower in front of his view of the Empire State Building, reminiscing about the 40 Acres.

To capture the campaign production process, a journalism student produced the following recap:


Ranked as the number one advertising program in the U.S. by the Journal of Advertising Education in 2010, Texas Advertising is well-known for producing talented copywriters and art directors who work in advertising agencies around the world.