On Friday, April 11, 2025, a team of advertising students from UNI took home the top prize at the AAF District 9 National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC) in Kansas City, Missouri for their winning campaign for AT&T to promote the brand to Gen Z consumers.
The team delivered a perfect pitch for a national promotional campaign that won accolades from competition judges, including the Talent & Development Marketing Manager from AT&T, Steve Harris Jr., who flew in from Dallas, Texas to judge the entries.
Photo by Bell Rogers
Team Creative Director Eliza Carlson summed up the sentiment of many team members by saying, “This experience has been one of the most challenging, rewarding, and fulfilling parts of my college career.”
Carlson went on to describe the intense preparation the team went through during their campaign development: “Every step of this journey was powered by collaboration, late nights, unexpected breakthroughs, and the excitement of knowing we were bringing a creative vision to life. This class simulates a real agency environment, but more than that, it creates a real sense of purpose, pride, and connection.”
The team of 26 UNI students has been working on the campaign since September when AT&T gave over 200 teams at colleges across the country a brief that outlined the goals and target audience of the campaign: To make Gen Z crave AT&T, building on the AT&T brand platform that “Connecting Changes Everything.”
Students then spent months researching that audience, along with mobile service providers and AT&T’s long history as a consumer brand. From this research, they developed a media strategy to reach their target audience, a messaging strategy to communicate to that audience and all of the creative elements that were to be part of the proposed campaign.
This work is part of an advanced course called Advertising Campaign Development (MKTG 4150) facilitated by Associate Professor of Practice in Marketing and Entrepreneurship Matthew Wilson, who is the faculty advisor for the AAF chapter at UNI. Wilson said of the team:
“It was an amazing weekend in Kansas City and I can’t say enough about the incredible efforts of these top tier UNI students. Up against formidable competition, grappling with insanely tight deadlines, and working together as one unified advertising agency up until the very last moment, this team pulled off the seemingly impossible.
Like the legendary Farokhmanesh buzzer-beating three-pointer against Kansas in the 2010 NCAA tournament, the achievements of this victorious team of champions will go down in UNI history as one for the ages.”
The team will now compete in the semifinals in hopes of securing a place in the top eight teams in the nation who will battle it out for the top national honor at the AAF National Conference in June.
A list of team members and their roles in the agency team
Pitch Team
- Bailey Klinkhammer – Presenter
- Jo Brahms – Presenter
- Faith Zanoni – Presenter
- Kylie Ryder – Presenter
- Aaron Hershberger – Alternate Presenter
- Megan Anderson – Presentation Designer
Accounts & Strategy
- Eve Wedewer – Director
- Faith Zanoni – Media Strategist
- Aaron Hershberger – Creative Strategist
- Ian Ruggiero – Research Strategist
Research & Insights
- Ashton Martens – Director
- Madison Duong – Research Analyst
- Ben Boddicker – Research Analyst
Media
- Kylie Ryder – Director
- Kaitlyn Bohr – Assistant Director
- Kamryn Klas – Media Specialist
- Korryn Bellows – Media Specialist
- Kylee Lombard – Media Specialist
Creative
- Eliza Carlson – Creative Director
- Lee Beauchamp – Assistant Creative Director
- Becca Jorgenson – Art Director
- Jo Brahms – Senior Copywriter
- Ema Lavigne – Director of Multimedia Production
- Bailey Klinkhammer – Copywriter
- DC Lucas – Copywriter
- Megan Anderson – Designer
- Ella Schipper – Designer
- Navi Lorence – Designer
- Annalee Bartels – Designer
- Aliza Yanez – Designer
- Bell Rogers – Multimedia Producer
- Maci Swanson – Multimedia Producer
- Dulce Murillo – Multimedia Producer