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Business Students Collaborate to Knock Out Oath Challenge

Business Students Collaborate to Knock Out Oath Challenge
Back row (left to right): Jessica Nguyen, Kristen Fellhoelter, Abby Westfall, Connor Meuret; front row: Virginia Sebastian, Sophie Podhaisky and Madeline Erker.
Marketing students from the College of Business tested their business acumen at the second annual Oath Advertising Knockout Challenge. A subsidiary of Verizon Communications which serves as the umbrella company of its digital content subdivisions including AOL and Yahoo!, Oath hosted the competition, November 9-10 in Omaha. Seven students from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln worked together in teams with other students from Creighton University and the University of Nebraska at Omaha and presented their solutions to a panel of judges.

The challenge tasked teams to utilize a $2 million budget to increase the millennial audience across the Yahoo Finance brand. They also had to boost the number of Yahoo Finance mobile app downloads. Strategies for each team were required to involve a non-finance related Oath brand. Jillian Droge, senior creative strategist at Oath, hopes students can walk away from the competition with a better sense of business.

“The challenge we present each year is a real challenge our company is facing. You can't get better real world experience than that. We hope the students will take away a better understanding of digital advertising, creative strategy and media planning. Oath has hired interns who participated in the Advertising Knockout in the past so it's also a great way to get your foot in the door,” said Droge.

The first place team from left to right: Kristen Fellhoelter, Hannah Wilson, Kylie Holman and Molly Rogers.
The first place team from left to right: Kristen Fellhoelter, Hannah Wilson, Kylie Holman and Molly Rogers.
Through effective teamwork, Kristen Fellhoelter, senior marketing major from Bridgeport, Nebraska, and her team won first place. The other winning team members included Molly Rogers and Hannah Wilson from Creighton University and Kylie Holman from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Their pitch, “The Value of Now,” showed how the decisions you make today have an impact on your future. They created three distinct points in their plan including experience the value, decide the value and invest in the value. Fellhoelter talked about how the team came together and utilized each of their unique strengths.

“My team was amazing because we all had different things we did best. I led the strategizing, helping create the idea and guide it. One focused on graphic design. Another majored in communications, so she led the discussion of communicating the idea. It was really cool to see how our talents played off each other and melded together,” Fellhoelter said.

The second place team included Nebraska Business student Jessica Nguyen, junior marketing major from Omaha, Nebraska; Michael Lyons from Creighton University; and Lyle Kwiatkowski from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Their plan looked to connect millennials to financial planning through convenient and accessible content about integrating personal finance into their daily lives.

Five other Nebraska Business students competed. These students include:
  • Madeline Erker, junior management and marketing major from Omaha, Nebraska 
  • Connor Meuret, senior marketing and music major from Omaha, Nebraska 
  • Sophie Podhaisky, senior management and marketing major from Richland, Washington
  • Virginia Sebastian, senior marketing major from Grand Island, Nebraska 
  • Abby Westfall, senior management and marketing major from Lincoln, Nebraska
Published: November 21, 2017