This is the second installment in the SJMC Communities series which highlights the wide variety of student organizations available to SJMC students. These organizations allow students to pursue their passions, hone their leadership skills, make new friends and explore potential careers all while building their resumes.
The Advertising Club is a registered student organization modeled after a traditional advertising agency. The club offers opportunities for members to learn more about the field of advertising through speakers and real-world work experiences. The organization is open to all undergraduate students looking to enhance their portfolios, meet new people and utilize their creativity.
Ad Club President, Ava Windel, became a member of the organization as a sophomore when she was curious about what a possible career path in advertising could look like. Since joining, the club has helped Windel shape her interests and post-grad plans while strengthening her skills as a leader and strong advertiser.
Windel elaborated on the opportunities Ad Club offers members and provided a variety of work samples from the agency teams. 
What does Ad Club do?
Ad Club has two parts, the first part is our speaker meetings, and those happen from 6 to 7 p.m. every Tuesday and that’s where we bring in speakers from different agencies and from the corporate side too. We like to try to get a mix of people with different career experiences. They share a little bit about their career path and their big pieces of advice. The second half of our club is agency, and this happens from 7 to 7:30 p.m. every Tuesday as well, and this is where we partner with local businesses in Madison, usually about five to six per semester, and are able to create marketing content for them. We create flyers, posters, brochures and a lot of social media work that goes into our projects. We’ve been really leaning into video lately, so it’s been fun to see what all the students are coming up with, and we do our work completely free of charge.
Why is Ad Club valuable for students?
It has been really helpful for me, especially when I first joined the club as a sophomore, just because I didn’t actually know what a marketing career looked like, or what an agency even was. It was a great, great spot for me to be able to just learn and see what my career might look like a few years down the road. Ad Club gives really great exposure and understanding of different types of jobs within marketing agencies and corporate settings. It’s also just a great way to meet people. You have free food every week, all of that good stuff.
It’s a lower time commitment, just 30 minutes a week. We don’t produce tons and tons of content, but I’m always super impressed by what agency teams come up with, and it’s a really nice way for people that maybe haven’t had an internship yet or haven’t had a job working in marketing to be able to get some things to add to their resume and build on their portfolio.
How does Ad Club prepare students for future careers?
Our main goal is to be able to give people things that they can talk about and have experience doing. We say, ‘the more the merrier,’ as many people as we can get doing different roles within an agency, we have, like the traditional roles you would expect from a marketing agency, but also lean into people’s strengths. If you’re really great at video, you’re going to work more on the production side of things. If you’re really interested in market research and you want to get to the bottom of how content has been performing in the past, and be more strategic, we have roles for that too. We’ve been able to shift and lean into what roles members want to have. If there’s a lot more people interested in doing social media work than there are people being copywriters, we’ll create more social media positions on the agency teams to be able to give people experiences that they’re really excited about getting, and just kind of be able to tailor the organization to what students need and how they want to continue to shape their resumes.
Why do you recommend Ad Club to interested students?
Through Ad Club, I know the people that I’ve met will be people I stay in touch with in a career setting for a long, long time to come. It’s a great way and a great place to build your network with your peers, which is so important, post-grad especially, but also, just a great place to shut the rest of the world out for 45 minutes, unplug, have some free food and take a break from studying.
As mentioned, I had no clue what an agency was or what that meant, but Ad Club really helped me build foundational skills and has continued to help me by being on exec board. I started as the client services director my junior year in the fall, loved that role, and then was able to become the president last year, which has allowed me so much visibility over all the things that we do in Ad Club. The exec board works really, really hard to get great speakers and to make sure we’re having fun and food. It’s been a wonderful opportunity for me and my development. I always say, even if you’re just considering joining exec or joining agency and getting a little bit more involved, you really have nothing to lose and you have no clue where it might take you.
What are the membership requirements?
Everyone is welcome, no matter what level of experience you have. It’s really low stakes, you don’t have to show up every Tuesday if you can’t make it. We’re really flexible in terms of schedule and all of that. We just want people to be able to take a little something and have it on their resume, and be able to take it outside of the classroom and expand their knowledge in a way that they maybe didn’t expect to.
- Attend weekly meetings when available
- Membership dues: $50 per calendar year
Interested in joining Ad Club? Learn more at the Wisconsin Involvement Network, follow them on Instagram or attend one of their upcoming Tuesday meetings!
If you are a leader of a student organization that wants to be featured in SJMCommunities, fill out this form or email Communications Intern Beth Shoop at eshoop@wisc.edu.