Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 22, 1990                   TAG: 9003222706
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: DEBORAH EVANS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

STUDENTS CATCH THE EYE WITH DISPLAY ON MARKETING

But three Patrick Henry High School juniors who were asked to put together a window display found a way to use the routine class assignment to promote marketing as a fun career and college as the way to achieve it.

Jason Tanner, Chuck Craig and Robert Marshall started with a trip to the public library, where they scanned magazines for ideas.

They found one. The theme of an ad in a computer magazine took readers from the Stone Age to the Computer Age.

While dressing mannequins in the latest fashions is a popular display used by marketing students, Tanner, Craig and Marshall decided to be different. They put together a laser light show.

Craig picked up a telephone book and began calling businesses listed in the Yellow Pages under lasers. He talked James River Laser & Equipment into lending a $6,000 laser that normally is used in construction to align ceilings and walls.

Computerland lent software for the project.

The businesses were promised "free advertising, sort of," Craig said.

The display area floor was sprinkled with sand and a few rocks were scattered about to create a desert-like look. The laser beam was placed on the far left, a computer was placed on the far right. Rocks and a strobe light were in between.

Mirrors on the left and right walls were used to refract light from the laser. The back wall was decorated with banners from area colleges offering marketing degrees, while red-lettered messages flashing overhead encouraged students to invest in the future through a marketing education.

The whole project took less than two days to set up, the students said.

"We had to make it look interesting," Craig said. "We had to attract someone's eye."

Tanner, Craig and Marshall said the lasers and lights were used as attention grabbers and appeared to work, judging from the numbers of students gathering outside the display window. "We wanted to push going to college and pursuing marketing as a career," Tanner said.

The students said they were recruited into Patrick Henry's 80-student marketing program while still in junior high. Each has the mandatory after-school job, which gives them on-the-job training, and each plans to major in marketing in college.

"It's a neat, true-to-life thing we do here," said Toni McLawhorn, chairman of Patrick Henry's marketing department.