Liberty team takes first place at National Student Advertising Competition

After finishing as the runner-up last year, students from Liberty University’s Advertising Team won first place in the National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC), held last week  at the American Advertising Federation’s ADMERICA Conference in St. Louis, Mo.

The 24-member team represented one of 96 universities in this year’s competition and one of eight to earn a trip to nationals. The other schools to make the finals were: Brigham Young University, Hawaii Pacific University, University of San Francisco, University of Missouri, University of Minnesota, Chapman University (third place), and Texas State University (runner-up).

The prize for first place includes a $5,000 scholarship for each student to the Brand Center, an advertising graduate program at Virginia Commonwealth University, along with the significant résumé-building achievement and a higher recognition for Liberty’s program.

The annual competition is for students pursuing careers in advertising and marketing. Most members on Liberty’s team are pursuing degrees in strategic communication under the School of Communication and the Arts; two students are part of the School of Business’ finance program. The team was led by advisor and adjunct professor Caitlyn Richard and graduate assistant Daniel Scicchitano.

“This was an incredible opportunity for Christ to shine in the world of advertising,” Richard said. “For us to take first place and have all of those universities’ eyes on us, they see that we’re a boldly Christian school that prays outside the competition before we go in, shines a light for God in the world of advertising, which can sometimes be dark.”

“We’ve had some incredible students over the years, and this year’s students especially have really poured in their whole hearts and souls to this competition,” she added.

Each year, teams participating in the competition are assigned a “problem” to solve to help a client better advertise their product or organization. This year’s client, the job-searching website Indeed.com, was particularly relevant to college students.

“It was super relevant because they’re all searching (for jobs) themselves, and a lot of the creative discussions we had felt very personal because they’re feeling like they’re falling into a résumé black hole and getting lost in the online job search,” Richard said. “Between our team members and the focus groups we did on campus with Liberty students, there was a lot of personal connection to Indeed.”

“We found a lot of different insights, and we learned a lot about the job search for ourselves along the way,” said Natalie Olson (’23), the team’s campaign manager. “(Indeed) asked us to target it toward 18- to 24-year-olds, so we studied more about Gen Z, and what we were really trying to figure out was how Gen Z feels about the job search process and how they want to feel about it.”

Liberty’s campaign tagline was “The search is over,” telling prospective Indeed users that the site’s search filters and wide range of job postings will allow them to conclude their search for employment sooner. Richard said the team’s presentation earned “glowing reviews” from both judges and high-level marketing executives from Indeed who attended the event.

Olson said this past year on the team has been an invaluable opportunity for her to grow her abilities in the field of advertising before graduating.

“This is the best thing anyone studying strategic communication, digital marketing, or other related areas could do to help prepare them for a career in advertising,” she said. “I can’t imagine not doing this before I graduated and tried to go into the industry. It really does show you what the industry is like in real life.”