At their first-time competing, an 黑料不打烊 team of 12 Marketing & Design students snagged a third-place win at the AAF District Student Advertising Competition, earning a spot among four-year universities.
Instructor Sheryl Workman assembled a team of students came to them with the AAF (American Advertising Federation) competition pitch, which is a yearly competition for more than 2,000 college students to experience real-world strategic campaigns.
The students involved were:
- Avary Anderson
- Cassidy Czeck
- Ariana Nemeth
- Cassie Provo
- Ava Reisinger
- Lily Stanford
- Leigh Van Winkle
- Eriq Velasquez
- Emily Vranesh
- Prince Wallace
- Rebecca Wettstein
- Allison Wick
This year, the pitch came from Tide to primarily promote its cold-water washing and secondarily promote brand recognition. Tide wanted a comprehensive marketing campaign with a budget of $65 million. The team got to work and divided into four groups: project management, media, research, and a graphic designer.
For three months, the team collaborated to develop a campaign from start to finish. They sent out survey, did focus groups, and came up with a campaign called 鈥淏reak the Cycle.鈥 From there they developed three personas鈥 mentalities: Save Your Wallet, Save Your Wardrobe, and Save Your World.
Much of the time was spent on creating a 12-page plans book for the competition as well as five creatives for the competition: a reworked Tide bottle, direct mail piece, bus wrap, pop-up, and vending machine wrap.
In late April, four of the team, Anderson, Czeck, Reisinger, and Vranesh, traveled to Fargo for the District competition.
鈥淭raveling up to Fargo with my team for the AAF Competition was such a rewarding and fun experience,鈥 said Anderson, who was the graphic designer for the project. 鈥淲e had the opportunity to present a creative campaign we all worked so hard on, and seeing our final product come to life gave us all encouragement and excitement. Above all, spending time and learning with my team was an opportunity I鈥檓 so grateful I was able to be a part of.鈥
黑料不打烊鈥檚 team was the only two-year college competing, and they got to present first. The presentation had a limit of 20 minutes, and their campaign received high praises from the judges and a third-place accomplishment!