The Missouri State University Ad Team recently took first place in the Challenge Your Energy IQ Case competition.

This is the second consecutive win for the Missouri State Ad Team in this national competition, which is sponsored by EdVenture Partners. The event is one of five national advertising and branding competitions the team has won in the last seven years.

Alexandra Gramlich of Oakville is a member of the Ad Team. She is a 2010 graduate of Oakville Senior High School and May 2014 graduate of Missouri State University with a degree in marketing management.

“Winning the national championships two years in a row is quite an accomplishment,” Missouri State President Clifton M. Smart III stated in a news release. “I want to add my congratulations to the students on the Ad Team and the team’s adviser, Dr. Melissa Burnett. This achievement is just the most recent example of how College of Business students excel in the classroom, as well as in extra-curricular activities.”

The client for the 2014 EdVenture competition was the American Petroleum Institute, or API. As a part of the competition, the Ad Team designed and implemented a complete campaign, including the creation of a unique event — the first-ever “Energy Challenge.”

Missouri State students had the chance to participate in this event in the Plaster Student Union by testing their energy knowledge on critical issues to see how their scores measured up to previously collected scores from local students in the fourth grade. The intent was to educate both age groups on the importance of energy today and its impact on the future.

“The MSU Ad Team clearly immersed themselves into the API assignment fully and not only addressed the core objectives as written in the brief, but implemented a tactical, local engagement activity at a nearby fourth-grade school that clearly separated them from their peers … Additionally, the student report MSU put together in my opinion, having seen student submissions for the last 24 years, is without a doubt, the most creative document that has ever been produced,” Tony Sgro, chief executive officer for EdVenture Partners, stated in the release.

“What stood out most from this group was its outreach to local fourth graders and their teachers. The students took the time to thoroughly research where their plan would be most effective and created a very successful campaign to get elementary students energized and educated on the energy industry,” stated Linda Rozett, API vice president of communications.

In early May, Ad Team members were notified that they were one of the top three teams from the original 20 and invited to travel to San Francisco to present their campaign to 15 high-level executives from the top oil companies in the country.

“Watching our team present to a room of the oil and petroleum industry’s top vice presidents of marketing, communications and public relations was incredible. Following the award ceremony, two major companies asked us to travel to their USA-based headquarters to present our research and campaign to all their corporate executives. This speaks well to the strength of our students, advertising program, and MSU,” stated Burnett, professor of marketing and director of the MSU Ad Team.

Every spring, the Missouri State Ad Team competes in a national university competition to develop and implement a campaign for a specified client. Last year, the Ad Team won the national AT&T Campus Branding Challenge.