Contact: Stacey Anderson
Crizio Sinuraya
KALAMAZOO, MI—With careful planning and execution, imagination is unleashed.It's a student at Western Michigan University. Crizio Sinuraya He was submitted to Adobe's 2023 Digital Edge Awards, where he was named the overall winner and won a prize of $10,000. The WMU digital marketing and e-commerce major from Yogyakarta, Indonesia, wowed the judges with his creative yet minimalistic approach to his LifeDog smartwatch campaign that he submitted to the contest. Out of more than 1,400 entries, Sinuraya's design stood out as original, thoughtful, focused, and digitally literate.
The first dog smartwatch, LifeDog is lightweight and resistant to bites, scratches, and heavy use. The watch offers GPS tracking, activity logs, health check reminders, and alerts for daily feeding and hydration schedules. He also converts time from human scale to dog scale based on his 1:7 ratio, where one year in a human's life is approximately seven years in a dog's life. The digital marketing campaign for Sinuraya watches began as an assignment for the Executive in Residence class Greg Garfen's An advertising and promotion course where Garfen asks students to submit a campaign for a patented product. Seeing the work of past students ignited Sinuraya's desire to submit her best work.
“I was motivated to make my designs look as professional as possible and go the extra mile, so I decided to create everything from scratch in Adobe Illustrator, including the product illustrations,” he says. . “It took us several weeks to envision what we wanted to show in the ad, but after careful consideration we decided to present the watch in the simplest way possible while keeping the message relevant to our target market. .”
target market
Sinulaya describes LifeDog consumers as “technophile dog owners” who embrace the latest technology trends and whose canine companions hold a special place in their hearts. In fact, it was dogs' unique place in American culture that inspired him to create this campaign. “The LifeDog campaign was born out of a bit of a culture shock that I experienced when I first moved to the United States. Dogs are treated with great respect here and are even considered part of the family. When she introduced herself to us in class, she didn't forget to mention her dog Winnie.
Hollywood movies have shown Sinuraya to be a special place for dogs in the United States, but seeing and experiencing it in person was something completely different. He combined his newfound perspective and love of animals with his design aesthetic. A self-proclaimed “Apple fanboy,” Sinuraya has always been fascinated by Apple's marketing concepts and wants to create powerful yet simple digital ads like Apple's iconic ads. I did.
“This project requires students to play several roles within an advertising agency,” says Garfen. “They need to understand marketing problems, set goals, identify audiences and discover insights, write creative briefs, and create campaigns. Crizio excels at every stage of a project. However, it was his final presentation that really stood out. His slides were elegant and impactful and complemented the presentation. His use of the Adobe platform was a great addition to the challenge. He went above and beyond the requirements and his presentation was one of the most memorable I have seen.”
Sinuraya journey
But as great as Sinuraya's work was, the path from competence to confidence was not as simple as his designs. “When I submitted his work, all I was thinking about was overcoming impostor syndrome and getting my work out there,” he says. “Although I was a little nervous, I was really looking forward to showing my work to the judges. I told myself to keep my expectations low so I wouldn't be disappointed.”
In the summer of 2023, he learned he was a top 10 finalist in the category he entered, Business. Shortly thereafter, he was informed that he had won the contest's top prize. “At first I didn't know if I was the overall winner or one of the four category winners. I remember screaming and jumping up and down when I found out I had won the top prize. The first people I told about this victory were my parents and brother.”
At WMU, Sinuraya found a supportive network of people who encouraged and uplifted him, said Gelfen and Dr. Scott Cowley, associate professor of marketing, as a faculty member who helped him develop confidence in his skills and ability to connect with others about marketing topics. In the spring of 2023, he participated in the International Digital Marketing Competition under Cowley's leadership, and his team won his second place out of over 200 participants.
In December, Sinuraya plans to pass the stage to receive his diploma and hopes to remain in the United States, secure a job in digital marketing at a major airline, and pursue another passion of his: aviation. That's what I think. He hopes this win and his experience in his digital marketing and e-commerce programs at WMU Howarth will help him realize this dream.
See Sinuraya's LifeDog campaign
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