By Zachary Morin

Throughout the year, UNH AMA students take on a plethora of projects. From organizing Marketing and Advertising Club meetings, to delivering marketing solutions for real-world clients, our chapter develops a broad range of skills that elevate our marketing capabilities. These projects have effectively increased the reputation and prestige of our organization, but we are far from alone.

Each spring, our chapter travels to the American Marketing Association’s Intercollegiate Conference (ICC), where we not only gain invaluable insights from industry leaders, but also compete against fellow chapters from across the world. It’s safe to say this year’s outing was nothing short of a success!

What is ICC?

The Intercollegiate Conference, held in New Orleans, features numerous opportunities to network with all levels of the marketing world. This three-day conference is comprised of interactive networking events, career fairs, hands-on workshops, and of course, competitions. 

This year, our team competed in the Perfect Pitch, Marketing Strategy, Sales, Marketplace Simulation, Design Lab, T-Shirt, and Digital Marketing Competitions. Additionally, awards relating to each chapter’s work throughout the year were recognized through the announcement of the top international chapters of the year. Last but certainly not least are the insights one can obtain from leaders in the marketing industry.

From keynote speakers such as CMO of the Minnesota Vikings Martin Nance, to CMO of New Orleans & Company Mark Romig, attendees get to learn how the concepts they learn in the classroom apply on the largest stages of them all! 

Mr. Romig, for instance, spoke heavily on his work with advertising the city of New Orleans to the world and how the definition of a target market applies even when promoting a location of that scale. He explained how obviously the hope of the city is for everyone to visit and enjoy what it has to offer, but through extensive research they discovered targeting the Midwest United States was the most effective way to drive tourism to the city. Furthermore, Romig discussed how important it was for the advertising campaigns of the city to drive traffic to its website, highlighting how, on average, someone who views the website stays an entire 17 more hours in the city than one who doesn’t. Evidently, thiscan’t miss event is jam-packed with chances to exponentially elevate one’s marketing capabilities; however, I’m sure the question on your mind is how we did, so let’s see!

Taking Home Gold

As I have mentioned before, our team competed in several competitions, and I’m proud to announce we made history in the process! 

Makayla Cennamo, a senior marketing student and AMA member reached the finals in the Sales Competition, being one of 24 finalists in the competition of over 115 participants.

Additionally, myself and my fellow MAC/AMA Marketing Associate Laura Holmansky took home fourth place in the Marketing Strategy competition, an event with 107 other competing teams. 

A huge shoutout as well to Maddie Nerden, MAC/AMA’s Marketing Director, who received AMA’s EBSCO Student Scholar Award for her leadership in marketing both on and off campus. 

Our fundraising efforts also earned us the chance to take the stage ourselves and present to other chapters! Through this presentation, we shared our tips and tricks for navigating an organization’s network and leveraging its services to efficiently raise funds for future events. 

Last, but certainly not least, was a welcoming and rewarding surprise to all our chapter when we were recognized as one of the top ten international small chapters of the year! This achievement, rooted in our hard work and dedication to growing our organization over the course of the past year, capped off an exhilarating night of awards that none of us are sure to forget.

Concluding Thoughts

As you can see, this trip to New Orleans was one of, if not the most exciting and rewarding experience of this year for our chapter. On a personal note, I cannot express enough how grateful I am to have been a part of this purpose-driven group. As a sophomore, having the chance to travel, network, and test my skills with fellow students across the globe was an invaluable experience to my professional development. I want to congratulate our entire chapter for their unseen, yet undeniable efforts to make UNH MAC/AMA the vessel of opportunity it is today. The work of this year’s team will forever be recognized as no small feat and serves as the perfect motivation to crush it again in 2026. Until next year, ICC!