A team of 23 Klein students traveled to New York City for this year’s National Student Advertising Competition where they brought home an award for developing the “most ownable” campaign platform.

It’s the morning of Friday, April 17, and a group of students from the Klein College of Media and Communication are huddled together on a train to New York City. They are putting the final touches on a 92-slide deck that, in just a few hours, four of the students will present to a panel of judges in the National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC).  

Competing against some of the top communications and advertising programs in the northeast, Temple’s team took home an award for creating the “most ownable” campaign platform, and they finished in fifth place overall. 

“This is as close as it gets to being in an advertising agency,” said Deborah Racano, assistant professor of instruction in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations, and the faculty advisor for Temple’s NSAC team. “The students learn what it takes, so that someday they can walk into an advertising agency and be part of a pitch team.” 

The competition is organized by the American Advertising Federation and involves more than 2,000 students each year. As the premier college advertising competition in the country, NSAC tasks student teams with creating a strategic advertising, marketing and media campaign for a corporate client. 

The client for this year’s competition was a large global brand with more than 50,000 youth initiatives, each with its own name, logo, branding and area of operation. Student teams were challenged with developing one brand platform under which the client could present their youth initiatives to the public. 

Temple students participate in the competition through two courses taught in the fall and spring semesters. Racano, in her second year as NSAC faculty advisor, recruits the top advertising students to enroll in the courses and make up Temple’s competition team. 

During the fall semester course, taught by Adjunct Professor Kris Weldon, students received a pitch brief from the client and began their research. The 114-page brief outlines the client’s request and contains some preliminary research and budget information.  

“The students get this brief, and then they have a phone call where they get to ask questions to the client—pretty much exactly how a real pitch would go,” Racano said. 

Students then conducted their own research—lots of it—using platforms like Nielsen and MRI Simmons. They also conducted interviews directly with the audiences they hoped to reach with their platform. Olivia Burkholder, KLN ’26, and Breanna Donahue, KLN ’26, two students on this year’s NSAC team, attended local sporting events where they spoke with parents and children. 

“We asked them questions like, what does your family like to do in their free time?” Donahue said. 

“Or, what is one quality you hope your child takes with them as they grow up?” added Burkholder. 

The team spoke with more than 700 people from 45 states and seven countries. 

During the spring semester course, taught by Racano, the students took insights from their research and began developing their platform.  

“There was a disconnect where some people viewed the client solely as an entertainment brand, and others viewed it as a family unifier,” Donahue said. “We found that community was the thing that could bridge that gap, and that’s what we built our platform on. Community and belonging are what families wanted to see.” 

The team developed a platform around the phrase “it starts in the huddle.”  

“We wanted to communicate to parents that everything they want for their kids starts in this huddle,” Burkholder said. “And in this huddle, they can find all of the initiatives that will help their children grow up to be the person that they want them to be.” 

They then created a national advertising campaign that included everything from social media advertisements to billboards, bus stop mockups, a series of promotional videos and even in-person events that the client could use to promote the platform. They tested their concepts and received more than 400 impressions, which they used to make final tweaks to the campaign. 

It all culminated in April’s competition, when the team traveled to New York City to compete against 14 other teams in NSAC’s District 2. After 92 slides and 19-and-a-half minutes of presenting, the team could take a deep breath and celebrate their hard work. 

“We killed it,” said Burkholder, one of the four Temple presenters. “It meant a lot to look out into the crowd and see our class that has put so much effort into this presentation. The best feeling was walking off the stage knowing that we did all of that work ourselves.” 

The winning team at the District 2 competition advances to the semifinal stage of the competition. Temple will have to wait until next year for another shot at advancing, but Racano and the team were thrilled with their performance and their award for creating the “most ownable” platform. 

This year’s result also creates momentum that Racano hopes will translate into a winning team in the coming years. 

“Temple students can sometimes feel like underdogs, so we want them to compete on the big stage, nationally,” she said. “Would I like us to win this competition? Yes. Do I think we could win it? Absolutely.”