(Above: A video of Inkventions, a silver award-winning CU-Boulder student project in the 2015 Young Ones competition)
Fourteen University of Colorado Boulder students had a wildly successful evening Tuesday in New York City, winning six awards in a top international advertising contest, the most collected by any public U.S. university at the event.
The One Club of New York, an esteemed industry trade group, presents the awards in the annual Young Ones student competition, a premier showcase of creativity in advertising, design and new media.
For their creative projects, the CU-Boulder students, who worked in teams, won two silver awards, two bronze awards and two merit prizes.
“The awards are a great honor for the students individually and also for our program,” said CU-Boulder advertising instructor Michael Weed. “It’s a very rare and prestigious thing for people to get into the show let alone win.”
This year’s competition drew 900 entries and 65 prizes were awarded.
The prizes demonstrate the strength of CU-Boulder’s program in creative advertising and provide a major career boost for the winners, said Weed. “A lot of students who win these awards are offered jobs even before they’ve left New York.”
Contest organizers provide scenarios in which students create advertising and branding campaigns for companies.
Students Haley Buchner and Stephanie Hayden won silver awards for the second consecutive year. “We feel really lucky to be in such a strong program at CU-Boulder,” said Buchner. “It has really set us up to go right into the working world and be prepared and get jobs at the agencies we really want.”
She and Hayden will graduate this week. Both have pending job offers, according to Buchner.
Buchner, Hayden and a third student, Rachel Edwards, teamed up on a scenario that required them to address the issue of children and technology. Their project boosts their client’s brand with a product called Inkventions. Inkventions involves workbooks that teach children about the fundamentals of electronics and the importance of reducing and recycling electronic waste.
CU-Boulder students Joe Abruzzo, Mia Cupidro, Kayla Epsman, David Green, Jarrod Gustin, Aaron Marten, Marisa Milisic, Brian Mulligan, Mia Nogueira, Maximillian Schein and Riley Walker also took home Young Ones awards.
CU-Boulder’s advertising program historically was part of the Journalism and Mass Communication program. This fall, it will expand and join the new College of Media, Communication and Information, which includes a variety of departments focused on communications and digital technology.
Interim advertising department chair Harsha Gangadharbatla said the new college will allow advertising students to build their skills in new areas. For instance, the college’s information science department, opening in fall 2016, will teach advertising students to analyze massive quantities of data to gain insight into consumer behavior, he said.
“Our creative program has always been really strong,” he said. “We’re hoping to build on that, expand and take advantage of the synergy the new college provides.”
For more information about CMCI visit http://www.colorado.edu/cmci/. For more information about The One Club and the Young Ones awards visit https://www.oneclub.org/.
Contact:
Michelle Fulcher, CMCI, 303-492-0460
michelle.fulcher@colorado.edu
Michael Weed, 303-492-7182
michael.weed@colorado.edu