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“Fear the Fraud” provides real
experience for Sacramento State students

Some of Sacramento State’s public relations students are stepping out from behind the desk to team up for a hands-on experience with help from the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition (IACC).

The IACC’s college outreach program allows high-level public relations classes to develop and carry out their own anti-counterfeiting campaign on their campus. Sacramento State’s Public Relations Planning and Management class is being sponsored by the company with a $5,000 grant and is the only university on the West Coast to be involved with this campaign.

“We want to show the high caliber of our students,” says Sacramento State student and “Fear the Fraud” media relations representative Suzanne Lambert-Ledbetter. “Most learning is static and this is us conceiving, creating and implementing an actual campaign.”

Counterfeit products can include clothing, food, cosmetics, jewelry and even medicine, of which the FDA estimates 10 percent to be counterfeit, Lambert-Ledbetter says. “This is a major issue, and I don’t want my father, mother or future child to be affected by it.”

To promote awareness about fraudulent products, the student public relations team will hold anti-counterfeiting awareness events April 14-19. T-shirts and wrist bands will be distributed, all of which were funded by the grant and are included as part of the students public relations plan.

In addition to preparing events and public relations strategies, the students prepared a website and an evaluation test that samples student opinions about counterfeit items. The test will help the team in evaluating whether their campaign tactics made an impact on the student population.

“It provides students a real time, real world opportunity to learn,” Communication Studies professor and campaign adviser Tim Howard says. “I’ve been able to see them at a new level—not only their academic performance, but their hands on work experience.”

However, their campaign goals reach beyond the campus. The student team hopes to obtain 2,500 pledges through its website to not purchase counterfeit items.

As far as personal goals for the students, Lambert–Ledbetter would like nothing more than the “satisfaction of successfully running a PR campaign with 50 classmates from conception to completion without too many hitches.

“This really gives us the experience of learning about a campaign and participating in it—it’s such a great opportunity for us,” Lambert-Ledbetter says.

For more information on the “Fear the Fraud” campaign and events, visit www.fearthefraud.com. For more information on IACC, visit www.iacc.org.