January 2024
The AAF Goes Back to School…Every Day!
AAF Advertising Education programs are World Class.
Our National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC)—now in its 50th year—has one of the Worlds Most recognized brands as the exclusive client partner for 2024—P&G’s Tide will challenge our AAF Students to do their very best work on one of the biggest brands in the World!
The National Student Advertising Competition is the premier college advertising competition that provides more than 2,000 college students the real-world experience of creating a strategic advertising/marketing/media campaign for a corporate client. Since 1973, the AAF has been leading the way on Student engagement and prepping our young adult members to be the future leaders of the Next Generation of Advertising, Media, and Marketing industries.
There is no better way to learn about the advertising campaign process than by developing a campaign for a real client. Each year, a corporate sponsor (client) provides an assignment or case study outlining the history of its product and current challenge. The case study reflects a real-world marketing challenge. Students must research the product and its competition, identify potential problem areas, and devise a completely integrated campaign for the client.
Each student team then “pitches” its campaign to a panel of judges. Judging is conducted by professionals in the advertising, marketing, and communications industry. Judges at the national level are selected from the client and their advertising agencies.
Each of the AAF’s college chapters can form a team for the National Student Advertising Competition on its campus. All students participating on the NSAC team must be dues paying AAF College Chapter members. The AAF is divided into 15 geographical regions, and based on their school location, student teams first compete at the district level, either in-person or virtually. The winning team(s) from each district then advances to the semi-finals, where NSAC teams compete for one of eight spots at the finals.
Our Student Advertising Career Conference back in November in New York City was a huge success with over 150 students and faculty joining known Advertising, Media and Marketing industry experts for non-stop informative sessions covering everything our students need to know about entering the workforce. The first two days offered a deep dive into the questions keeping our students up at night, the third day provided a special unique opportunity for our students to meet directly with hiring recruiters from agencies, media companies and industry leaders.
More AAF Educational Resources are here.
Our commitment to advertising education is unparalleled and one of our strategic pillars that gets a lot of support and emphasis from the AAF. Additionally, our new American Advertising Foundation—the charitable (501c3) service arm of the AAF with the mission to primarily identify, nurture, prepare and advocate for diverse and inclusive talent for the Advertising, Media and Marketing industries. Learn more about how you can support this effort here.
—Steve
