#winning

My posts have been about my balance between Ad Team and UIB lately, and I have just about reached the end of this saga. I have decided to split up the posts because I just made it through the biggest weekend of my life. For the past 2 months, I have worked tirelessly alongside my fellow ad team members as well as my 3 fabulous professors on the National Student Advertising Competition Case for JCPenney. We have spent every minute of free time during the week and every hour of the weekend in the ad lab working on this campaign for JCPenney, and it all paid off this past Saturday in Boston at Hill Holliday during the NSAC District 1 Competition. In order to accomplish this, I had to make sacrifices. I could not be there for my fellow UIB members during Spring Week or Wildcat Wahoo Carnival. I could not mentally wrap my head around other school work, or my other involvements, and I wasn't a very good employee during this time.

Countless presentation run-throughs and 5 presentations to classes, alumni, and administration later, we were ready! We left Providence for Boston Friday afternoon. The school was kind enough to put us up in a hotel and feed us a nice dinner the day before the competition. After dinner, we did a quick practice run-through and went to bed early (at least the presentation team). Saturday I woke up feeling great! Never in my life, had I ever been 100% prepared for anything until this. We all walked to Hill Holliday together (one of the largest ad agencies in New England). Everyone was in such a good mood, minimal nerves, and great vibes all around. The Hill Holliday office was amazing, located in the center of Downtown Boston on the 35th floor, the office has the best view of the city. We delivered the BEST presentation we had ever done, we had fun with it, and we engaged the audience as well as the judges. In the Q&A, the judges had nothing but praise and suggestions for the next time we deliver this presentation. Our biggest rivals Boston University and Emerson College went on back to back after lunch, their presentations were shiny and used emotional appeals to reach the target, very different from our campaign. Once the time came to announce the winners, the AAF had a bright idea to announce the top 4 via Twitter. Good in theory, but failed in execution. It just resulted in an angry crowd waiting for the person in the front of the room to finish typing out each tweet on their iPad. First thought that came to mind when Emerson and BU were announce 4th and 3rd were "who the heck got 2nd?" then we found out Roger Williams got 2nd, we were 95% sure we were going to be the next tweet, and we were! So many emotions leading up to this moment, there was screaming, hugging, crying, laughing, instantaneous retweeting, you name it - it happened. JWU Ad Team is going to San Diego for nationals!

We could not have done this if it weren't for the tremendous amount of teamwork and lack of inflated egos in the team as well as our 3 awesome faculty advisors who were there with us throughout the entire process. You know your professors love their job and care about the success of their students when they are working in the ad lab with you at odd hours of the day instead of spending time with their families. Words can't express how lucky we are to have them and just how much they care about this program. That also goes out to our other supporters from all levels of the University.

It's surreal to think that in exactly one month we will be competing at nationals in San Diego, and in less than a month we will be in Sweden, and even less than that I will have to have my life packed into a small storage unit.

Stay tuned, there's more to come...