If students visit the beach bar Elbo Room on Las Olas Boulevard, they’ll see a photo of Gary Gore, a local singer, songwriter, DJ and comedian, performing with Davy Jones, former band member of the Monkees. The photo is from Gore’s favorite memory as an artist.
“I convinced him to get up on stage and do a song with me. That was the greatest night playing live,” Gore said.
Born in New York, Gore has lived in Arizona, Massachusetts and Florida. He has performed more than 10,000 live shows, including as Elvis for special events. He also makes children’s music, and is an artist with a space at Studio 18 Art Complex in Pembroke Pines.
In COMM 4200 Public Relations Campaigns last semester, Jennifer Magas, assistant professor in the Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts and adviser of NSU Public Relations Student Society of America, collaborated with the Davie Cooper City Chamber of Commerce to create a campaign for Gore with her class.
“We looked at everything from his audience, what his messages would be, what are his goals, what are his objectives and what would the proposed tactics be?” Magas said.
The Chamber held a “Revitalize Your Business” contest, that Gore won. Students developed an electronic press kit for Gore’s brand, Gary Gore Music, detailing Gore’s background, services and experience.
“We came up with some ideas, but then Gary said to us, ‘What I really need is an electronic press kit,’ and it’s a little different for musicians than it is for other types of businesses. We pulled that together in a week, which was a big undertaking for a small class,” Magas said.
Magas said the opportunity opened more doors for students, like giving them memberships to the Chamber of Commerce.
“It’s not every day you get a chance to work with a real world client. A lot of times we’re simulating in the classroom what it would be like in a real world campaign,” Magas said.
Nicolette Sobit, senior communication major, enjoyed creating a campaign for Gore. She said it was informative and helped prepare her for a future career.
“You may think you made something good, and yes it may be good, but in the end, it’s for the client. So you have to like tailor your material to please the client,” Sobit said.
Kayla McGee, senior communication major, remembers when the class had to spend an hour trying to find a specific shade of blue Gore liked.
“We went through 50 different shades of blue to the point where one of our colleagues created a document and did the hex colors and [showed them] in order. By the end of the day, we could not handle blue,” McGee said. “But it finally worked out because we found a color that he liked and actually represented him.”
The Chamber of Commerce awarded the class for the campaign the students made for Gore. McGee wasn’t expecting the award when she went to the ceremony.
“I was just going through the motions of looking and enjoying the ceremony, and then they presented the award to DCMA and to our class for the project that we did,” McGee said. “I did not go in expecting that. I did not know I was walking into an acceptance speech.”
Gore said working with the students was an amazing experience.
“You can’t see the effect of their work because I’m still implementing a lot of it, but I’ve already created more marketing material in the last two or three weeks because of what they’ve done than I have in
years,” Gore said.
Be the first to comment on "Students create campaign for local DJ and artist"