Lt. Gov. Sue Ellspermann's office has awarded Huntington University $25,000 for creating the best campaign to promote the state's agriculture industry.
The finalists — from Huntington, the University of Indianapolis and the University of Southern Indiana — pitched their ideas to the departments of agriculture and tourism, the Lieutenant Governor's office, and members of the agriculture industry Monday.
"All of the teams made strong presentations," says Ben Kenney, director of Communications for the Indiana State Department of Agriculture. "The Huntington presentation captured all of the ideas that we were looking for in this competition. Very creative, out of the box thinking."
The Lieutenant Governor's office ran the competition, seeking a campaign focused on promoting the agriculture business to 18-35 year olds in the state.
"If you look at the most recent data that came in, it showed for agriculture that that age group was shrinking in size," Kenney said.
Huntington will get $10,000 of the prize money. The other $15,000 will be split among the
student team members.
The department of agriculture has intellectual property rights to all competition entries, so Kenney says it's possible the department will use elements from several of the presentations.