District & Semi-Final Competitions
District Competitions
For the first round of NSAC competitions, each team competes at the district level (determined by the geographical location of the school). District competitions will vary. Some competitions are held in conjunction with a professional district meeting while others are not. Some districts may only have a few teams and others will have more than 20. Some districts have competitions that last two days. Others are held for only one day. Some district competitions move from city to city around the district and others are always held in the same city.
District judging panels select a first-place team(s) to move to the semi-final round. Districts that have 18 or more teams qualify as mega-districts. In this case, teams will be evenly divided into two randomly selected competition tracks with two separate panels of judges. First-place winners from each competition track will advance to the semi-finals. More details are provided in the NSAC Policies and Procedures guide.
Semi-Final Competition
Once the in-person district and virtual district competitions wrap up, all first-place district winners will advance to the semi-finals to compete for one of eight national finalist spots. Following the district competitions, the presentation from each qualifying team will be recorded and forwarded to a judging panel for review.
Practitioners in advertising and other related disciplines in media, marketing and research will judge the semi-finals. While the judges review the 20-minute presentation, the AAF National office will schedule a date and time for each team to have a 10-minute video conference Q&A session with the judges via Adobe Connect.
The teams’ rankings will be based on the presentation scores and the answers provided during the Q&A session.