by Taylor Massey
Four Republic High School marketing students won awards at the second AdZou Challenge at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. At the competition, the Republic team won an award for “Best Team Research,” and junior Kensington Booth won an individual award for “Best Individual Presenter.”
Last December, the first AdZou Challenge was hosted as a way to encourage students to learn about marketing opportunities at the Missouri School of Journalism. In 2021, seven teams of two to five competitors from across the state were invited to participate. This year, 10 teams were selected, and Republic was one of them.
Republic’s team consisted of four students: Rylee Moorefield, Paige Missey, Brady Pendleton and Booth. They were presented with a fictional scenario where a company was attempting to launch its new product. Given basic information, they had to create a presentation communicating how they would advertise the product and why they made the marketing decisions they did. Their presentation was graded by journalism professors and current journalism students at the University of Missouri.
“The biggest benefit from participating was focusing on getting quality work in a very short amount of time,” Moorefield said. “Our team was striving to win, so we were pushing ourselves and each other to do the best we could. It was so exciting to be a part of such a good group with so much potential. We were able to see what the real advertising world looked like and kinda get our feet wet with ideas and brainwork from professional people.”
Before students were presented with their task for the competition, they arrived on campus at 9 a.m. to hear various presentations from professionals at the school, including Dean David D. Kurpius. They learned about the goals of the Missouri School of Journalism and the importance of different strategic communication efforts.
Booth, who is also a member of RHS DECA and FBLA, said this competition served as practice for future competitions she will participate in.
“I learned how to compile a ton of ideas into an actual real-life scenario,” Booth said. “It was also practice for future DECA and FBLA competitions, so that was really nice. I hope to use the new teamwork skills I gathered from this in the future, especially in the other clubs I’m involved in.”
Moorefield also said teamwork was especially important to succeed in the competition.
“Doing AdZou with my team, I was able to see the true importance of teamwork in a professional aspect. We all had our own jobs we needed to do in order to be where we wanted in a short amount of time.”