WTAMU placed second at the National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC) in Shreveport, La.
Districts were divided into two different areas and WT went up against Texas Tech, Midwestern State, Oklahoma State University, Texas State and Texas A&M. Texas A&M took first place followed by WT and Texas State was in third. About 24 teams from several different places competed in the competition.
“[Texas A&M’s] ability to research and all the resources they had gave them the upper edge,” Julia Greif, speaker for the Buffalo Advertising team, said. “It turns out that we were one point behind Texas A&M. We rehearsed so many times and were told that we were the team to beat.”
Greif was also a part of the creative team with Carlos Aguirre, an Advertising and Public Relations major. Aguirre worked mainly on the design of the campaign.“The design was connected with the main creative idea, the innovation we communicate for our campaign was translated in the plans book with ‘passion lights’ that connect all the graphic elements that are constant in all of our creative executions,” Aguirre said. “The design is the visual response to all of our ideas, I think it helped in the competition by making the judges aware of our product.”
Lori Westermann, WT instructor of Mass Communication, teaches advertising and public relations classes. Westermann oversaw the project to make sure students effectively created a solid campaign.
“The students really get a feel for the competition going up against many schools, but also see that it’s this competitive with high level jobs,” Westermann said. “The WT Buffalo Advertising team was amazing. I’m not only proud of them, but we had so many people coming up to us telling us that we were the presentation to beat.”
She said Dr. Leigh Browning has been a great asset to the presentation team by contributing with her experience in speech and broadcasting.
“Dr. Browning came on board last year and has been a great help to this team up to this following year, taking the presentation team to the next level,” Westermann said.
Advertising and Public Relations major Stacy Saultz was part of the research team.
“We started research last year for this campaign doing in-depth interviews,” Saultz said. “We really connected with the passion points for the campaign.”
