By DAMIEN CROGHAN and SUE BURZYNSKI BULLARD
J Alumni News staff
Team Volation
For the first time, CoJMC advertising students were among the finalists last June in the regional National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC), a prestigious program sponsored by the American Advertising Federation (AAF).
The UNL NSAC team won first place in regional competition in April and an all-expense paid trip to the nationals in Washington, D.C., for the team and its advisers.
Although the team did not win the national competition, team adviser Phil Willet said competing in NSAC is a great learning experience.
“Nationals make it all worthwhile,” said Willet, an assistant professor of advertising. “The opportunity to be part of the American Advertising Federation’s annual conference provides a great networking opportunity and the chance to meet and see the work of students from over 150 colleges. This is an experience that cannot be duplicated in any classroom.”
NSAC gives advertising majors an idea of what real world experience is like. Rich Bailey, the retired CEO of Bailey Lauerman and a team adviser, said the experience “is close to what they would encounter in the advertising business. The competitive involvement teaches something you can’t always get from the classroom.
Willet explained: “The class forms an actual advertising agency where students learn the value of working with others to solve a marketing problem for a major national advertiser.”
“Students get to present before a real client and see how competing universities have attempted to solve the same problem. Year after year, students tell me it is the class they get the most out of during their college years.”
The program is challenging. “It takes a lot of time and effort,” said Amy Struthers, an assistant professor and advertising sequence head, who also advised the team. “It takes a certain kind of student who’s really into this.”
Bailey said the students put in a tremendous number of hours outside the classroom preparing for the competition. “I applaud their initiative. This requires a great deal of creative and innovative activity as well as organizational skills.”
The CoJMC will house the District 9 trophy for the next year
The competition begins in early September, when each college team is recruited through the campus AAF chapter, which at UNL is the Ad Club. Each team receives a case brief, containing background information on the company and the campaign objective. Each brief details the demographic the client is trying to reach and any problem the client has had reaching its target audience.
Last year, a nonprofit organization called Century Council was the client. Their objective is to prevent underage drinking, particularly binge drinking among college students.
Each team had to develop a strategy and creative executions as well as a media plan, using both traditional and nontraditional media to get its message out. The chapters had a hypothetical $10 million budget to work with and had to plan an integrated marketing communications campaign based on that budget.
The students conducted research, analyzing past campaigns to determine why they succeeded or failed. The UNL team also conducted interviews and an online survey and held focus groups.
Senior Carley Schnell, an advertising major and the team’s account executive, said the team tried to “go off the deep end with creative ideas.”
UNL competed with schools from Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska in the regionals.
District judges said the UNL team, called Volation, stood out with a unique and risky creative concept for an anti-binge drinking campaign.
“The past teams had their ups and downs,” said Aaron Jarosh, a senior advertising major and team member. “In some years they placed second or third, and in a couple they didn’t do so well; it just depended on who was on the team or who the competition was that particular year.”
This was the first time UNL ever won the District 9 competition, earning a chance to compete with the top teams nationally. At the national competition, 18 schools presented their concepts. Syracuse University took first place.
Besides Jarosh and Schnell, the team included creative director Amber Thomson, account director Spencer Shute, research director Daniel Scheyer, technology specialist Mike Sammons. Other team members were: Adam Kiser, Brook Euteneuer, Jennifer Larson, Rae Moore, Marissa Piette, Erin Sorensen, Chelsea Thompson and Eric Van Wyke. Advisers were Struthers, Willet and Bailey, an adjunct professor in the advertising sequence.
Even though the team did not win at nationals, its members say they learned from the experience.
“We took a risk with our campaign and we knew that the judges would either love it or hate it,” Jarosh said. “But we were all very proud of ourselves for taking that risk and doing what we thought would work. And it paid off, I think. Just making it to nationals is a feat in itself.”
Now, a UNL team is working hard on this year’s case study, which involves selling State Farm insurance to college students.
District competitions are slated for April, and the finals will be in Orlando in June.
UNL has been competing in the program since 2004, and student participation has grown. The team started with about six members and now has more than 20.
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