The group's next stop is the national finals in Atlanta in early June. 

The Ad Team spends the better part of a year preparing a campaign book and ten-minute pitch for the competition.  Dave Koranda, who has been the Ad Team adviser at the SOJC since the late 90s, said that Ad Team Member Carolyn Bee "...hit the nail on the head when she replied, 'we didn’t settle. We worked on the campaign until we were all happy with it. Today we saw things in other presentations that we had originally thought of and discarded'.  Not settling this year meant not having all the visuals for the presentation done until less than an hour before they were to present. But the presentation went flawlessly. The team was also told that their book was the easiest to read of all the books they had seen and the design of both the presentation and the book were outstanding."

This is the 15th time in 26 years that the school's Ad Team has won the District XI championship.  One group has won the national competition.

"I was very very proud to be one-twelfth of such a great team," senior advertising major Alexa Nelson said. "I would have no idea how to begin to count all the days and hours that we spent working on this campaign. When they announced our name as the first place team, everyone just got really, really excited. It was nice to know that all our hours of work had paid off."

Senior Matthew Gardner agrees.  "Hours can’t count the hard work. It has been more of a conscious decision to neglect, set aside, and full-out abandon other things in order to make this thing work. No amount of hours can reflect what we’ve each individually given this team.I had not had any previous experience like this before. This process takes nine months (ten, now) to complete and you learn so much about the teammates surrounding you on an academic, business, and personal level. This intense of an experience – lasting this long – is definitely new to me."

Around the same time--although the two incidents were unrelated--David Kosse '84 made a $10,000 gift to the Ad Team endowment fund.  This fund, started five years ago by Marcia Aaron ’86 and bolstered by major gifts from Brett Klein ’84 and Tim Clevenger ‘86,  helps support Ad Team expenses—including travel to competitions.

Kosse is currently the director of international marketing for NBC Universal and is based in the UK.  In January, Jeff Zucker, the company's President and CEO, recognized 12 NBC executives for superior work with a $10,000 award to the organization of their choice. Kosse, who has not yet been reached for comment, directed his award to the Ad Team Endowment Fund. 

According to Koranda, there's still some preparation to do before the team competes in the national competition, which will be held during the AAF National Conference in Atlanta on Saturday, June 7.   "The team members know they have to step it up a notch to compete against the 16 other regional winners."

But that doesn't temper the excitement.  "I am so excited for finals," senior Courtney Nelson said.  "I don't think life could get much better than this."

 From the AAF website:  "AAF's National Student Advertising Competition is the premier college advertising competition. It provides more than 3,000 college students with real-world experience by requiring a strategic advertising/marketing/media campaign for a corporate sponsor. Schools from each district are selected to present their campaigns to a panel of industry executives at the AAF National Conference."

If you are interested in making a gift to the Ad Team Endowment Fund, please contact
 Sara Mason, director of development, (541) 346-2358 or saram@uoregon.edu.