The Tuscaloosa chapter of the American Advertising Federation awarded several University of Alabama students for their creative advertising efforts at the 2012 ADDY awards ceremony in February.
Entrants of the ADDY awards included professionals from Tuscaloosa and East Mississippi, and students from The University of Alabama and Mississippi State University.
Entries include all forms of advertising from all media outlets and are judged in many areas including concept, quality, copy and design.
The UA AdTeam won three gold ADDYs, two silver ADDYs and Best in Show in the student category for its “The Push,” an integrated marketing campaign for Nissan, which also won second place in the nation at the 2012 National Student Advertising Competition.
Myreete Wolford, AdTeam president, said its winning entries will automatically be submitted to the district level, and she hopes they will eventually make it to the national ADDY competition June 6. Wolford said the Tuscaloosa AAF chapter always brings in a lot of tough competition.
“Everyone, from our professors at school to professionals in Tuscaloosa, is involved,” Wolford said. “Every single person in Tuscaloosa, if they have some kind of impact, can enter.”
Wolford said the AdTeam was excited to be recognized by the whole city for all its hard work on the campaign.
“When you doing something like an integrated marketing campaign, you forget how good it is after months of working on it,” Wolford said. “You become numb to it. When someone says how good it really is, it’s rewarding.”
Students in the Capstone Agency also won ADDYs in the professional category for their contribution to the LessThanUThink campaign.
Lauren Gallas, a senior in advertising, served as director of design for the LessThanUThink Spring Break Beach Ball campaign that won a silver ADDY in the professional category. She said she designed promotional items from T-shirts to lanyards and a beach ball.
“I’m glad I had the opportunity to do so,” Gallas said. “I got so much real-world experience, and I feel like I could do anything after working on that campaign.”
Julia Ludlam, who studied advertising and graduated in May 2012, was awarded two silver ADDYs in the student category for her out-of-home print and out-of-home alternative ads as part of a mock-campaign for Amazon.com.
Ludlam said she felt she had done a good job with the campaign, which was a class assignment, and was flattered when her instructor asked if he could submit her ads for the ADDYs. She said the project occupied much of her time, as she perfected the details of her work even up until her graduation.
“It was a lot of work, and on top of that, there was the non-stop creative thinking even out of class,” Ludlam said. “It seemed like all that paid off.”
Leading in today’s Crimson White:
Gators, Gamecocks up next for Tide tennis team
