The Ideas United team brings a touch of Hollywood to Atlanta with their Campus MovieFest. Pictured from left to right is David Roemer ’02BBA, Ajay Pillarisetti ’02C, Vijay Makar ’02BBA; and Dan Costa ’01BBA.
Making movie magic
Four years ago David Roemer ’02BBA wondered what would happen if he got a group of students together to make a movie for the first time.
As head of the Apple Computer Student Corp, he knew the technology he’d need to make a movie. After discussing the idea with fellow Goizueta student Dan Costa ’01BBA, the two decided to give students a camcorder, a laptop and five days to make a five-minute movie.
This past April, what began as a freshman experiment in a dormitory four years ago graduated with honors as the Delta Campus MovieFest. Nearly 10,000 students from eight Atlanta-area universities used 100 camcorders and 100 laptops to create 400 movies. The top films from each school were screened by a full house at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre. Each campus winner received two free tickets to anywhere Delta flies in the United States, and the grand-prize-winner received not just airfare, but a top-notch vacation. Each and every movie entry—finalist or not—is available for viewing at www.campusmoviefest.com.
How do you parcel out camcorders and laptops to students at Emory University, Oxford College, Georgia Tech, Georgia State University, Morehouse, Spelman College, Clarke-Atlanta University, and the University of Georgia, view all 400 movies, collaborate with Delta Airlines and Apple Computer, put together an event for more than 4,000 people and transfer 400 movies to a website? “We just get it done,” says Costa, president of Ideas United, the marketing strategy company he and Roemer formed along with Goizueta alum Vijay Makar ’02BBA and two other Emory University grads.
They get it done by sleeping less than most people (about four hours a night), eating a lot of delivery food, and calling upon what they learned during their tenure at Goizueta.
Take the name of their company: Ideas United. “We learned in Dr. Kembrel Jones eMarketing class that the name needed to be descriptive without limiting you,” notes Makar, the company’s vice president of corporate development.
“Because of the diversity of the group, we wanted something that would represent our vision and, well, had a website available,”
adds Costa.
The film festival, originally termed “iMovie Fest” brings students together and creates school spirit by having the teams compete, albeit good-naturedly, against each other. Having common guidelines, the films are limited to five minutes and are assigned a theme (this year’s theme was “Lifting the World”).
The students still call upon several Goizueta professors for guidance, including Andrea Hershatter, Richard Makadok, Steve Walton, Amrit Tiwana, Doug Bowman, and visiting professor and advertising guru Joey Reiman, who does marketing work for Delta. “They’ve been incredible,” says Costa. “We come back to them with realized ideas and changes and they give us their feedback.”
Case studies, which helped them avoid mistakes, and guest speakers, which helped the new business owners network, are among the benefits the group received from Goizueta. Additionally, the non-Goizueta members of Ideas United—like Ajay Pillarisetti ’02C, Ideas United’s creative director/graphic designer—provide a valuable non-business perspective to the mix.
Turning the student event into a marketing tool was a natural outgrowth, the group says. The Ideas United team was in the same
eighteen- to twenty-five-year-old demographic as the students they worked with, and unlike traditional marketing methods, they knew that Campus MovieFest did reach their peers. The group now counts Delta and Apple as their corporate partners. “It’s working to create excitement about their brands, increase loyalty, and (increase) community involvement,” says Roemer. “It’s the best way Apple has found
to get people to try its new technology.”
What’s next for Ideas United? They hope to take Campus MovieFest nationwide. “This event can work at any school and we’d love to share it with schools around the world,” Roemer says. They left for St. Andrews, Scotland, two days after the Fox event to do a Campus MovieFest for the University of St. Andrews, Scotland’s oldest university. The group also plans to branch out to community centers and corporations. “We don’t see ourselves stopping until we’ve helped everybody tell their stories,” he adds.
Emery Lewis ’02BBA recently joined Ideas United, and two other Emory University grads round out the fold: Liz Van Hooser ’99C and Anton DiSclafani ’03C.
ECOSEAC, Emory’s student environmental group, earned first-place honors in this year’s Delta Campus MovieFest@Emory with their humorous short movie about what happens when people don’t recycle.
—Allison Shirreffs