"It was hard for students to grasp who these people are: How do they think? How does a bank think?" says Koranda. Bank of America created the assignment for this year's National Student Advertising Competition, sponsored by the American Advertising Federation.

The competition provides students with an opportunity to practice what they've learned in an intense, high-pressure environment much like the real world of advertising. "The process is a very real experience for students. For those who go through the experience, it's almost equivalent to having worked for a year in advertising," Koranda says.

The students struggled for months to come up with an innovative strategy. They drafted ideas and discarded them.

"It seemed like every time we thought we were finished, something went wrong or we needed to start over," says Ben Jenkins, an Ad Team copywriter.

Koranda encouraged the students to take a risk with their plan, and they did. Through research, the students discovered that many investors were wary of trusting their investments to a bank. Armed with new insight, the students created a new brand for Banc of America Investment Services, eliminating references to the bank.

"We took a chance in creating a campaign that might not have been exactly what the client wants to hear," says Jenkins.

Before leaving for the regional competition in Anchorage, Alaska in April, the Ad Team submitted a proposal for the judges to review. Their spiral-bound portfolio included the results of surveys, interviews and focus groups the students had conducted with affluent investors, as well as strategic insights, a comprehensive media and marketing plan, and a detailed advertising budget. It also included a creative proposal branding Banc of America Investment Services, Inc., as BAISI and adding a clean pyramid logo to better represent the company's straightforward approach to investing and mirror the symbol used by the New York Stock Exchange to indicate the market is going up.

In Anchorage, the Oregon students competed against teams from Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Alaska. They won the regional competition and qualified to go to the national competition in Miami in June.

"I knew that our campaign was a good one," says Jillian Johnson, a copywriter for the Ad Team. "We'd been living and breathing this thing for months. We'd shown it to almost every professor in the J-School and received really good feedback."

At the national competition in Miami, the pressure was even more intense. The other teams from around the country presented sophisticated, professional work. But the UO team stood out again, taking second place in the competition. Dean Tim Gleason, who accompanied the students to Miami, says, "The members of the Ad Team's efforts, as well as the way they represented the School, were nothing short of outstanding."

The top four finishers were Southern Methodist University, University of Oregon, University of Minnesota and UCLA. The 16 finalists qualified from a field of more than 200 universities from all regions of the United States.