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Even nerves and over 200 pairs of critical eyes couldn’t stop the UCLA Advertising and Marketing Team from winning their regional competition this week.

On Monday, the UCLA Advertising and Marketing Team, also known as “Ad Team,” won the District 15 regional competition of the American Advertising Federation’s National Student Advertising Competition held at California State University, Fullerton.

The victory qualified them for their first trip since 1999 to the national competition to be held June 5-6 in Nashville, Tenn. along with the 14 other regional competition winners.

This year’s competition required teams to develop a $10 million communications plan for Yahoo!, targeting teens aged 13-17 and including advertising, partnerships, promotions and direct marketing for Yahoo!’s youth-geared products. Each year a different corporation sponsors the NSAC, which hosts more than 150 colleges and universities.

With an overall score of 90.15 out of 100, the UCLA Ad Team dominated the competition. The Art Institute of San Diego came in second, with a score of 74.9 points.

Shannon Knock, a fourth-year communications and sociology student, is a co-account supervisor for the team – akin to a team captain – along with Greg Dodds, a fourth-year Design | Media Arts student. Knock said nerves took hold before presenting on account planning in front of the crowd of over 200, but once the presentation began, things changed.

“I was on auto-pilot. I was prepared so I was confident in my preparation,” she said.

Dodds, though not part of the presentation team, said he was also anxious at the competition. “It was very nerve-wracking,” he said. “We had a good feeling going in and we had no idea how we were going to do.”

Teams had to produce a plan book, which accounted for half of their score, and included all of their research on the company and demographic, as well as their ad plans. The Ad Team’s book contained mock ups for their fictional campaign: five print ads, two television commercials, one of which was actually made, and a transcript for a radio commercial.

The remaining part of the score came from a presentation the team gave to judges from the communications industry and Yahoo!

Nerves gave way to excitement once the results came in.

“Just hearing the judges’ reactions to our campaign was really, really exciting,” he said.

Jenn Tranbarger, a fourth-year Design | Media Arts student, presented the creative portion.

Tranbarger said the key parts of the success of the UCLA Yahoo! presentation were its cohesiveness and the individual moments of each presenter.

“We all had our special moments. It worked and flowed really well. And we all had really good energy; it’s a happy, fun brand,” she said.

The team is made up of six subgroups, including the creative team and the promotions and public relations team, which work on researching leading up to the competition. Of the 46 members in the Ad team, five participated in the presentation: Scott Carruth, Becky Ho, Alice Hua, Shannon Knock and Jenn Tranbarger. These five will be flown to Nashville and have their hotels paid for as the prize for winning the regional competition.

Team members not in the presentation group will have to find their own ways to get to the national competitions, as the team receives no funding from the school. The team is supported entirely by their own fundraising efforts, the largest of which is a letter-writing campaign soliciting donations from family and friends. The team also does freelance advertising for businesses in Westwood to raise money.

Right now the team is just trying to have fun and relax before the national competition.

“It’s nice to have a little break for now,” Dodds said.

Professor John Kochian of the communication studies interdepartmental program is the faculty adviser for the team.