Getting Real About Suicide Prevention in the Classroom and Beyond: Using a Classroom Simulation to Create Communications for At‑Risk Individuals

Marketing faculties, as well as business schools in general, are placing increasing importance on finding ways to better tie theoretical concepts to real-world situations. In the article that follows, we describe a project wherein students were given an opportunity to apply core consumer behavior concepts to a simulated advertising project with the aim to prevent suicide. A post hoc qualitative survey was conducted, and a series of propositions were generated. We propose that students have high levels of recall when studying in a real-world simulation. Additionally, our findings suggested that when students use core concepts in real-world simulation projects, they are able to later apply those concepts in actual real-world situations. Finally, we propose that simulations are an effective way of teaching sensitive subject matter.