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My name is Maddy Hernandez, and I’ve had the incredible privilege of working as a research strategist on Â鶹¹ÙÍø & Wales University’s student-run advertising agency, Candlelight Communications. I am an Advertising & Marketing Communications major, and I’m working to complete my degree in the upcoming year.

Â鶹¹ÙÍø’s award-winning ADTEAM is back at it. Coming off of last year’s first place win at the (NSAC), the team is more focused than ever to start working on this year’s case.

Last year, after a majority of its members graduated, the team took on a large number of newcomers to help create a fully integrated advertising and marketing communications campaign for the 2017 client, Tai Pei Frozen Asian foods. The entire ADTEAM is incredibly passionate and eager about this competition and the industry as a whole.

This year’s NSAC case is presented by the king of cranberries, Ocean Spray — and the team is diving headfirst into the “bog” of research by taking its work out into the field. We sent a group of ADTEAM members to tour real cranberry bogs in Massachusetts and get a chance to harvest these berries during prime harvesting season.

The team has always kept the process the same in creating its campaigns and is a firm worshiper of the cold hard facts. Research is what holds everything together. Both of the team’s faculty advisors, Christine Ure and Oscar Chilabato, credit its success to its dedication to research and attention to detail.

"The level of excitement and interest in the program and the major has skyrocketed."

Along with the win at the NSAC national competition this past June, the team, unfortunately, had to say goodbye to a group of wonderful and talented seniors. But as the saying goes, when one door closes, another one opens. The amount of students, from first-year to seniors, who reached out to the returning members of the ADTEAM because they wanted to snag a spot for themselves, was tremendous.

The level of excitement and interest in the program and the major has skyrocketed. So far the team has only had a few meetings, but they are looking to pick things up in the upcoming weeks and then really dive headfirst into all the research after the Thanksgiving break.

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