Finding the Story: Loyalist students turn client constraints into creative campaigns 

When a client asked Loyalist students to help grow national awareness and online sales, the assignment came with an unusual catch: strict Canadian regulations meant the product itself could not be promoted in traditional ways. 

That challenge became the basis of one of the most complex client briefs second-year students in Loyalist’s Advertising and Creative Design program had tackled. 

Each semester, students in the program work in small teams on real client campaigns, developing strategy and creative concepts over seven weeks. Program Coordinator Robert Kranendonk structures the class like a creative agency, with students pitching solutions to brands facing real marketing problems. 

This year’s final-semester brief came from Cigar Chief, an Indigenous-owned online retailer based on Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory. 

While the company can legally sell its products online across Canada, advertising restrictions limit how those products can be marketed. For student Rigel Carias Soto and her team, that meant rethinking the assignment from the ground up. 

“There were so many limitations around what we could say and where we could say it,” Rigel says. “It gave us a really small set of parameters to work within.” 

Instead of trying to market the product directly, the team looked for another entry point. Their concept shifted toward storytelling, drawing on the people, craft and culture around the brand while also responding to the client’s goal of reaching more women. As part of the campaign, they proposed a printed romance-style novella called The Story of Him, with digital copies shared with BookTok creators ahead of launch. Framed as fiction, the idea offered a way to build intrigue around the brand and extend the campaign beyond more conventional product promotion. 

“Everyone has a story,” Rigel says. “When we started researching, we realized there were stories everywhere: the owner, the farmers, the people who roll the cigars. So instead of talking about the product itself, we focused on the people behind it.” 

The approach earned Rigel’s team the top pitch of the semester. 

The project also pushed students to think carefully about the context surrounding a campaign — not just the creative brief, but the legal and cultural realities shaping it. 

As part of their research, students consulted with staff and community members from Loyalist’s Tsi Titewaya’taro:roks Indigenous Centre. For Rigel, that process became one of the most important parts of the experience. 

“It pushed us to really think about how we approached the brand,” she says. “We wanted to highlight the culture and the business in a respectful way, and that meant doing a lot of listening and learning before we started creating anything.” 

That kind of client work is built into the structure of the program. Alongside developing campaigns for local, regional and national brands, second-year students also mentor first-year teams, offering feedback on research, presentations and creative ideas. 

“It’s interesting because when you’re in first-year, you don’t always understand why the process works the way it does,” Rigel says. “But once you’ve been through it, you start to see the bigger picture. Being able to share that with the first-years was really rewarding.” 

For Kranendonk, that exchange is part of what makes the classroom feel more like industry. 

“Students naturally learn from each other,” he says. “Formalizing that mentorship just helps strengthen the process.” 

By the end of the four-semester program, students have worked through multiple client briefs, each with its own constraints, audience and strategy questions. For Rigel, the Cigar Chief campaign stood out because it showed how creative thinking often begins with limits, not freedom. 

“The biggest thing I’ve learned is how powerful creativity can be when you’re trying to solve a problem,” she says. “Businesses come to us because they’re stuck on something. Being able to sit down, think creatively and find a new way to approach it — that’s what makes the work exciting.”