NSAC AT&T

The AAF National Student Advertising Competition is an opportunity for students to create a fully integrated campaign for the yearly client based on their ask. This year, AT&T asked us to increase brand love and awareness amongst Gen Z (12-27 y/o) consumers.

Project Strategies/Solutions:
This process was two semesters long, with a team of 15 people. We began this process in September by reading the client brief and truly getting to know it in our bones. This was followed by weeks of initial research that included a survey of 320 Gen Zers, 126 concept test results, one-on-one interviews, focus groups, and ethnographic research tracking phone notifications. We realized its smaller, everyday moments that make Gen Zs days. So, we reframed AT&T’s slogan, Connecting Changes Everything, to fit into the right context and places according to Gen Z. We wanted to make the brands messaging something this generation wants to pay attention to.

We developed a highly integrated campaign with a custom media plan, a channel strategy tailored to Gen Z, an engagement strategy to match, and relevant creative executions, resulting in us winning 1st place at our competition in District 1. Programs the team utilized in this process were Adobe Creative Suite, Lumiere, MRI Simmons, and Qualtrics.

My role during all of this was to wear many hats. I had the pleasure of being the Lead Strategist and Editor, coordinating in-depth research during this process, writing and reviewing copy in our campaign book, and delegating tasks. Specifically, I also got to work on our executive summary, slogan research, small moments, and media strategy pages. I wanted to be there when people needed me and be able to help everyone on our Strategy & Research team feel like they were contributing to this campaign. I also assisted our media team in budgeting different categories correctly based on where Gen Z lives online and off.

Since I had already worked on many areas of this campaign, I was naturally one of our presenters for the district competition. Working alongside three other talented team members, Matthew Siggerud, Ben Ruehl, and Shannon Tapley, we presented our campaign to the judges. After our materials submission, we worked hard to write, edit, and memorize our presentation. Overall, we wanted it to feel natural and get our campaign insight of “small moments” across.

My Roles:
Lead Strategist
Lead Editor
Collaboration with media strategy team to assist in allocation of budget
NSAC District 1 Presenter