AAF - University of Northern Iowa

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.

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

Students from AAF-UNI won big last Friday at the 2025 American Advertising Awards in Waterloo, Iowa. Aspects of their 2024 “Save Your Style” campaign for Tide detergent won awards in three different categories – including Student Best Of Show.

🏆 Student Best In Show Gold ADDY
Social Media Campaign
Tide – “Saved My Style”

⭐ Gold ADDY
Integrated Marketing Consumer Campaign
Tide – “Save Your Style”

⭐ Silver ADDY
Outdoor Advertising Campaign
Tide – “Save Your Style”

The campaign was created as part of the National Student Advertising Competition – which AAF-UNI has been participating in since 2012. Each year a new client sponsor gives students a real-world advertising challenge – and Proctor & Gamble’s Tide detergent needed a national campaign to meet its sustainability goals of lowering the carbon footprint of washing clothes.

The team’s “Save Your Style” campaign emphasized the benefits of cold-water washing through an emotional appeal to GenZ’s love of their clothing. Washing in cold is the best way to keep colors bright, resist fading, and prevent shrinkage. The team found that people who love their clothes wash them in cold water.

The campaign was visually stunning – using graphic elements taken from vintage Tide advertisements from the 1950s. The creative team worked hard to re-introduce Tide to a new generation of fashion-savvy consumers through a multi-channel creative approach that included social media, out-of-home (OOH) advertising, experiential activations, video advertising, and influencer marketing.

The campaign was presented in Kansas City on April 19, 2024 – and after the competition ended, many team members graduated and went on to professional careers in advertising and marketing.

Team Creative Director Ella Poppen, now a Brand and Web Designer at creative agency IFC Studios, said that winning these awards was a “great way to continue celebrating the team’s hard work.”

The American Advertising Awards are the advertising industry’s largest and most representative competition, attracting more than 25,000 entries every year. The mission of the American Advertising Awards is to recognize and reward the creative spirit of excellence in the art of advertising.

The first official meeting of the college chapter of the American Advertising Federation (AAF) at the University of Northern Iowa (UNI) will take place on Thursday, September 2, 2021 at 6pm at Curris Business Building room 321.

Join us to learn about AAF and what we have planned for the coming year. With Oculus as our client this year, it is certain to be an epic year.

We’ll also have a few Oculus VR headsets to play with!