The American Advertising Federation holds a yearly contest called the National Student Advertising Competition, or NSAC. Only the best collegiate programs sign up, and only their very best and brightest are privileged to attend. UT Austin has a stellar record of attendance, historically sweeping the competition with incredible work from the Stan Richards School of Advertising (the nation’s #1 advertising program). UT took a break for a few years during staff changes, and reentered last year with amazing work that viewers were shocked only made it to national semifinals. Regardless, their efforts changed the competition; every other regular saw what UT could do, and took pages from our book. Quite a few other teams copied our professionalism from last year: keeping off the stage, ignoring the audience of students to present just to the judges, forgoing microphones for a conversational tone, and making beautiful use of supplementary boards rather than just a flashy PowerPoint or song-and-dance routine.
As you can see, we had a lot to live up to this year; and a lot working against us, as the other schools were out for blood and UT keeps the course to a single semester instead of two or three. We still pulled together the best work I’ve possibly been a part of at UT, which is saying a lot. We behaved 100% professional at the district 10 competition in Shreveport, LA even in the face of petty politics. We supported each other as a family, presented like absolute titans of industry, and each did our part to make something great together. Having watched almost every other district 10 presentation, I can without bias say that I think were Wienerschnitzel to take our advice, they would see good returns, if not the best of the lot.
That said, I would now like to take you–dear reader–through the whole process. First however, this link is for a PDF of the final book we handed to judges. It was a rush job due to having such a shorter timeline than most schools, but I think is still representative of the standard of quality put forth by UT.
As always, I was in the account planning department of our in-class agency. Led by our professor Dr. Liza Stavchansky-Lewis, we strove to make our agency as realistic as any “real-world” one. The only thing we really couldn’t replicate was the main job of the account management team, as Wienerschnitzel representatives could not be in constant contact for logistical reasons. Therefore, my department’s work was heaviest in the start of the semester. The rest of our team relied on what insights we could find about our target market through research. We began with secondary, trawling through books on hot dog history and looking up Wienerschnitzel management on social media. We presented initial findings to our class in the following presentation.
We were starting to form some thoughts about the Big Idea by this point, but obviously needed to do a lot more work still. So we began a national online survey, sampling some for individual interviews to gather quotes and qualitative insights. The goal was to refine our target, develop a complete profile on them, round out questions the class had gathered for us, and begin honing in on the Big Idea. You can see our process here.
A lot of discussions ensued. Our late nights at the student Union were more or less complete, but the age-old struggle of making sure research is understood before acted upon was only just beginning. Finally the entire agency was on board with the target we had chosen, giving them a name and solidifying actionable points as well as condensing all of the statistics we pulled. Below is the creative brief; notably, our joint Big Idea was…
The Craving You Forgot
Essentially, we determined that young semi-professional males (and similar, more specific target segments) who eat fast food a few times a week don’t have any negative perceptions of hot dogs as suggested by the brief provided by Wienerschnitzel. Rather, they forget that hot dogs can be an everyday meal like hamburgers or tacos, not just at summer social events or for children. Indeed, they can even fit our target’s lifestyle better than those options as they are very cheap, very fast, and very customizable. The target just has to remember how much they love them–and we found that a simple reminder was almost always enough. Every interview ended with something like, “wow, I really want a hot dog now!”
With those key ideas decided and our department’s work generally complete, the rest of the project went by in a veritable blur. Soon we were gathering our notes for the book, and preparing for the pitch. While I don’t seem to have a copy of the pitch, rest assured it was the best and most impressive professional pitch possible; all four presenters did a wonderful job, and our slides and boards were beautiful.
I was part of the InDesign team creating the book but again it was very rushed as the rest of the team began working the day before a spring break trip I had had planned for months.
The competition itself was lovely! We all had a lot of fun, from the Sand Bar to the stage.
This was an incredibly memorable trip that I’m grateful to have been part of. Team 805!