Business Leadership Students Use CreateAI to Create Their Own Commercials

A recent assignment from Professor Marc Andreas saw a group of Business Leadership students use cutting-edge technology to learn about sales and marketing.

In early February, Andreas, associate professor of business leadership and the program’s director, tasked his Marketing and Sales class with employing artificial intelligence to craft a 30-second commercial for the item of their choice.

He says he was excited to finally be able to assign such a project, because it allowed students to create their own marketing materials for the first time.

“In the 10 years I’ve been teaching this class, I’ve always wanted to do something like this, but the technology was never quite there,” he added.

The assignment allowed the class to flex their creative muscles as well as demonstrate their knowledge of marketing principles, with topics ranging from cosmetics brands to Kuyper College basketball.

Jimena Soto-Lara, who created an ad for a moisturizing lip product, was one of those students. The experience, she says, was eye-opening.

“It helped me see how much planning goes into marketing, and I learned that AI can be a useful resource, especially when you have creativity and strong ideas to create an ad,” the business leadership senior added. (You can view the ad she created here!)

Another important component of the project was discerning appropriate ways to use AI, a topic Andreas is passionate about.

Along with fellow professors Jen Colin and Andrew Zwart, he serves on Kuyper’s faculty AI task force. Over the last year, the group has spent time researching and discussing ethical ways to use the technology in higher education.

“AI is something that’s probably going to be a big part of our future, and we at Kuyper want our students to be prepared to deal with it,” he insisted. “It can be a great tool when used in the right setting.”

Andreas added that he hopes his students walked away from the assignment with a better sense of how to use AI in a way that aligns with a biblical, Christian worldview.

“At Kuyper, we believe the medium itself has inherent value, but it’s not entirely neutral. It can be used both positively and negatively, and I hope that this assignment was a positive example of that,” he said.