Cuesta Wins Award for Television Spot

Cuesta College’s 2004 Financial Aid outreach television commercials recently where awarded the prestigious 2005 California Coastal ADDY Award from the American Advertising Federation. The 30-second spots “Make a Change” won the Silver award tied with the Chumash Casino “Porsche Giveaway” commercial and “A New Reality” won the bronze. Both commercials where designed to reach the 18-25 year old and the 25 and up demographics respectively, and were paid for by special funding designed to help mitigate the effects of the recent tuition increases. The commercials were produced by Stephan Gunsaulus, Public Information and Marketing and Justin Viar of Next Movement Entertainment, an independent production company based in Santa Maria.

“ Our intent was to make the phone ring in the Financial Aid department and to let our students know about the financial support opportunities available at Cuesta” said Gunsaulus. According to the Financial Aid Department staff, the ad campaign was effective. Staff members dealt with a deluge of inquires during the airing that was designed to coincide with the College’s enrollment period. Scott Roark strategically bought air-time to reach the wide-ranged audiences on a variety of channels, including producing both commercials in Spanish and airing them on the Univision network, the nation’s largest Hispanic network.

One of the challenges of using the television commercial format is to appeal to as many segments of the market as possible and this was accomplished by using a young, innovative and talented local company like Next Movement Entertainment. 27-year-old Next Movement owner/director Justin Viar, a Chapman University Film School graduate brought many good ideas and a professional film crew from Los Angles to the mix. Viar enlisted Chapman alum and LA based cinematographer/director, Eric Gustavo Peterson, as Director of Photography, who was able to borrow Panasonic’s $70,000 24 frame Digital Video camera for the entire 3-day shoot. ( For a real visual treat, check out Eric Peterson’s work at:
www.lightbyeye.com)

The Financial Aid Department funded the production and airing of the commercials.
The spots featured local actors, many of whom are Cuesta students, and had cameo appearances by Bill Snider (Business Education Faculty), Scott Roark and the Financial Aid Staff. Toni Sommer and Mary Parker graciously provided access to the classroom and lab areas that gave the spots the authentic “Cuesta Reality” look.

For more information or a DVD copy of the commercials, contact Stephan Gunsaulus at ext.3153.