 "Photo:")
Terry Clark is on a mission to replace one of SIUC's front doors - the one seen off campus.
Clark and several students have just put the finishing touches on a promotional video and several 30-second commercials to display the uniqueness of the university to the outside world.
Clark said the commercials - produced under moniker Barking Dawg Productions - attempt to craft the way outsiders see the campus, as opposed to previous ads comparing SIUC to other universities.
"We're telling our unique story," he said. The commercial starts out with a fast-paced slideshow of students around campus.
It moves on to footage of students lighting Bunsen burners, flying airplanes and doing activities such as horseback riding and rapelling.
It repeatedly says SIUC is the "one place" where students can do these combinations of activities.
ABC affiliate WSIL-TV has agreed to show the commercials free of charge and do a feature story on the video, Clark said. The audience the ad will reach is one that does not typically make up a large part of SIUC's population.
Of 2,117 in-state freshmen from fall 2006, only 239 - approximately 11.3 percent - come from the WSIL viewing region in Illinois.
Clark said the original intended audience was prospective students in the Chicago area, but he said he hopes it will work everywhere.
"We want to speak to the folks in Chicago, mid-state, downstate, Kentucky," he said. "We want to start stealing their students, or rather, attracting them."
The university will begin airing the ad in the immediate area partly because they don't have the money to run it in Chicago, Clark said.
He said they still plan to send it to high schools with recruitment officers and place it on the new Web site. He said he wanted the commercial to establish the university's status as a research institution and emphasize its unique geographical location.
Other universities, such as Cornell or Dartmouth, could probably tell the same story, but it'd be a different geography, Clark said.
He said the main focus of this commercial is Illinois.
"Our (geography) is rather unique. For example, (the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) couldn't tell this story. It's pretty flat and dismal up there," Clark said. "Nobody in Illinois can tell a similar story."
He said the combination of wine country, the Shawnee Hills and various bodies of water give southern Illinois a unique combination of geographical features.
Ron Stout, a senior from Marion studying technical resource management, said he thought the commercial accurately portrayed SIUC but was a little too fast-paced at the beginning.
Yen Tran, a junior from Rantoul studying social work, agreed with Stout on the portrayal, but disagreed on the pacing.
"I liked the pacing in the beginning because it made it seem like college life, like we're always doing something," Tran said.
sarah_lohman@dailyegyptian.com 536-3311 ext. 255
