The American Advertising Federation (AAF) hosts the annual ADDY Awards, which are the biggest and most prestigious competition in the advertising business. The competition is divided into three levels: local, district, and national. The District 10 competition took place in Dallas, Texas, back in March. Acorns campaign by Maddie Otero and Morgan Martinez won SILVER; Fender had Helena Hargraves and Kailyn Sawhny win SILVER; Skout’s Honor Pet Odor Eliminator campaign earned Helena Hargraves win GOLD; and Truth Initiative’s campaign led by Spencer Hogan, Bella Mac and Allie Weinstein win GOLD. Every student who placed Gold or Silver in the district level advances to the national competition.
Early in May, the national competition winners were revealed, and later that month, in Salt Lake City, Utah, during the AAF ADMERICA Conference, awards were presented.
At the National ADDY Awards, Truth Initiative campaign by Spencer Hogan, Bella Mac and Allie Weinstein was recognized with a SILVER ADDY. Acorns by Maddie Otero and Morgan Martinez earned a SILVER National ADDY. Helena’s campaign for Skout’s Honor Pet Odor Eliminator took home the SILVER , while Helena’s and Kailyn’s campaign for Fender took home the GOLD National ADDY Award.
Helena & Kailyn with their National ADDY Award
We are beyond thrilled that Spencer, Bella, Allie, Morgan, Maddie, Helena and Kailyn’s campaigns received national recognition and brought four National ADDY Awards to SMU!
On April 17-19, Southern Methodist University had the honor of hosting the National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC) for the first time on campus in 41 years. NSAC is a collegiate advertising competition sponsored by the American Advertising Federation (AAF). Two hundred seventy-five students participated in this year’s competition, representing 21 universities from Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas. These talented students developed a campaign for Proctor & Gamble’s Tide for this year’s competition and presented it to a panel of judges.
Temerlin Advertising Institute Professor Nicole Haddad directed and led this year’s team. The SMU team showcased its skills and creativity and secured a commendable fourth-place finish. Ben Perry, a student on SMU’s team, earned the impressive title of best presenter in the competition.
“Seeing myself and others be recognized for the hard work we put in not only this year but throughout our academic careers was truly invigorating. Winning best presenter was an honor that reflected not just my own efforts but especially those of my classmates and team in our pursuit of great work and determination to make each other better every day. Being a Temerlin student is a true blessing.” – Ben Perry
In conjunction with NSAC, Southern Methodist University hosted the AAF’s Mosaic Awards. Companies, agencies, and individuals from District 10 (Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas) were recognized. Twenty-one awards were given for their commitment and work to diversity and inclusion. Our Endowed Distinguished Chair and Director of the Temerlin Advertising Institute, Joe Phua, spoke at the ceremony.
Additionally, the American Advertising Federation hosted an awards ceremony for District 10, where students and faculty members were recognized. Dr. Mark Allen was awarded the “Outstanding Educator of the Year” award, which you can read more about [here]. Scholarships, a symbol of academic excellence, were also awarded to students. We are delighted to acknowledge three of our creative students who were among the recipients. These students include Spencer Hogan who was awarded the Jim Goodnight AAF scholarship, Ethan Jones who was awarded the June Cerrato AAF scholarship, and Kailyn Sawhny who was awarded the Harry Ottman AAF scholarship.
“I’m honored and excited to receive this award! Thank you to all the people who have guided me through this journey. I am so excited to further my advertising experience!” – Kailyn Sawhny
We were thrilled to host this year’s AAF National Student Advertising Competition and are incredibly proud of the SMU’s Tide team and faculty for all their recognitions and accomplishments.
Our amazing creative students have won 14 ADDY Awards at the 2024 AAF District 10 competition. This is more awards than any other school in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana has won!
What’s even more impressive is that our students won as many awards as all the students from the University of Texas system, Texas A&M system, University of North Texas, Texas Tech University, and Texas Christian University put together!
The ADDY Awards are organized each year by the American Advertising Federation (AAF) and is the advertising industry’s largest and most representative competition. There are three tiers to the competition: local, district, and national. Each student who won Gold or Silver at the district level is now moving on to compete at the national level.
The winners of the national competition will be announced in early May and awards will be distributed at the AAF ADMERICA Conference in Salt Lake City later that month.
We’re so proud of our students and can’t wait to see how they do in the next round!
The full list of Student AAF District 10 Winners can be found here.
SMU AAF DISTRICT10ADDY WINNERS:
SPECIAL JUDGE’S AWARDS
Acorns (Special Judge’s Award in Copywriting) Maddie Otero & Morgan Martinez
Amtrak (Special Judge’s Award in Video) Timothy Chae and Blake Lyster
GOLD
Skout’s Honor Pet Odor Eliminator / Helena Hargraves
Truth Initiative / Spencer Hogan, Bella Mac and Allie Weinstein (Art Direction)
Truth Initiative / Spencer Hogan, Bella Mac and Allie Weinstein (Poster Campaign)
Amtrak / Timothy Chae and Blake Lyster
SILVER
Mountain House Camping Meals / Emma Clarke
Fender / Kailyn Sawhny and Helena Hargraves
Insomnia Cookies / Ross Yenerich
Seedlip / Callie Oden and Emma Clarke
FTND Pull Back From Porn / Tyler Chapman (Cinematography)
KILZ Primer / Spencer Hogan
Acorns / Maddie Otero & Morgan Martinez
HONORABLE MENTION
Venmo /Juan Silva & Kaitlyn Blan
FTND Pull Back from Porn (TV Advertising) / Tyler Chapman
“The weight and distinction of these awards are marked not only by the talents of the students, but also by the win over many large and world-renowned agencies that were also in direct competition”
Amongst the extraordinary, with an extravaganza to match, the annual ADDY’s was held on February 26, 2022. An exuberant and staggering 30 of the 38 student awards were awarded to Temerlin Advertising Institutes undergraduates at the annual symposium. Students took home twelve bronze awards, twelve silver, five gold, and the “Best of Show” award. TAI’s students, amongst professionals and other institutes of higher enrollment, was the only undergraduate program to take home a gold award. The weight and distinction of these awards are marked not only by the talents of the students, but also by the win over many large and world-renowned agencies that were also in direct competition from the Dallas-Ft-Worth metroplex.
When asked about the distinction and rigor of this competition, undergraduate professor Dr. Mark Allen stated that he was “very proud of this group of students and my TAI colleagues who have helped nurture our small-but-mighty program.” Dr. Allen pays special tribute to Willie Baronet and Cheryl Mendenhall, as it is through their creative guidance that “Temerlin continues to punch in a much heavier weight class than our size would typically allow. What other universities attempt to do with hundreds of students and dozens of faculty, we’ve been able to accomplish with a highly-skilled “special ops” group,” Dr. Allen states.
The praise won’t stop here. The winners of these awards will move to the District Ten competition, of which include all finalists from Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. From there, Nationals will follow suit showcasing the best talent from across the United States on both the undergraduate and professional level.
Congratulations to the following Dallas ADDY Winners for 2022. You are a part of what gives Temerlin its astute distinction and credibility in such a subjective field.
Bravo!
DALLAS ADDY WINNERS 2022
BRONZE / Dallas Ballet Academy > Out-Of-Home Campaign
Ceci Luther and Thida Sok
BRONZE / Hearing Loss Association of America > Integrated Campaign
A chance meeting while working in the hall at ULEE, SMU Psychology student and Neuroscience Lab Research Coordinator Madison McMahan met Advertising Professor Dr. Carrie La Ferle. After several conversations, they got to know each other. Recently, Madison shared her Big iDeas business idea: Panacea!
More than Instagram or Facebook. More than a dating app. Panacea helps people easily make friends based on shared interests and hobbies.
Taking cues from the world of advertising , Dr. La Ferle gave Madison some general ideas to consider for making a winning “pitch and presentation” on her Big iDeas Business Competition pitch.
After her Panacea idea won, Madison shared her enjoyment of the Big iDeas journey and learning how to start a business. “I had such wonderful encouragement from my family, friends, the Engaged Learning Team and SMU faculty Carrie La Ferle, Bruce Snider, and Carlos Martinez! This experience has given me huge insights into marketing, planning, advertising concepts, and the overall business world. The skills I have gained will help me in the future, especially with the things that I am super passionate about such as helping people find friends.”
Madison plans to launch the app in July and hopes everyone to be able to join Panacea to form new friendships.
Temerlin Advertising Institute students recently competed in the 16th annual National Student Show and Conference (NSSC), sponsored by the Dallas Society of Visual Communications Foundation. The team of Kell Klopp and Allie Hartman won three awards: Best Overall Copywriting, Best of Advertising Category: Integrated Campaign, and Best of Advertising Category: Copywriting. Isaac Cordova won the prestigious Richard Patrick Memorial Scholarship Prize in Photography, given for the best body of photography work. The participants received their awards at the first NSSC virtual awards gala on April 25.
“This is an exceptionally competitive and prestigious show, and it’s a huge honor just to have your work accepted, let alone win,” said TAI Lecturer Mark Allen. “This year, we had more entries accepted than ever before and won more awards than ever before. We’re incredibly proud of these students!”
The NSSC began in 1957 as a one-day regional competition to give North Texas communication arts students the opportunity to showcase their work, and in the 1970s became the Dallas Society of Visual Communications Student Show. While there were many national competitions for established industry professionals, there were few competitions for up-and-coming students. In response, the DSVC Student Show transformed from a small, regional contest into a three-day national competition and conference in 2004. Now known as the NSSC, it is the largest advertising and design competition for students in the country, offering over $20,000 in cash prizes and scholarship awards.
The three-day event typically features keynote speakers, breakout sessions and portfolio reviews followed by a dinner reception and awards gala. However, due to the coronavirus, the conference was canceled and the gala was moved online this year.
Allen participated in the DSVC Student Show when he was a student in the late ’90s. He has taught in the Temerlin Advertising Institute since 2003, and was first brought on to help start the creative program for art directors and copywriters.
“I knew the NSSC was a great place for us to get our name out there and to get our students recognized,” said Allen. “I started encouraging students to compete back when I first came to SMU in 2003, and we’ve been participating ever since. The DSVC also holds a professional show around the same time every year; my fellow advertising colleague Professor Willie Baronet and I have both participated and have been fortunate enough to be recognized for some of the work we’ve done as art directors and designers over the years. It might be a ‘regional’ show but it’s got a national reputation.”
Allen played an influential role in the competition itself this past year.
“For years the only advertising categories that the NSSC recognized were the traditional big three: print, radio and television. So I worked with the DSVC to add several new advertising categories that reflect current industry standards: interactive, out-of-home, experiential and others,” he said.
He also influences his students to consider participating.
“I am the cheerleader who is always telling students to enter their work,” he said, noting that getting one’s work and name recognized with the best of the industry can help propel careers. “I also help them figure out strategically what the best categories are for them to enter. It’s easy if you have a commercial – you put it in the commercial category. But if you have an integrated campaign that has several different pieces, it can be tougher to decide where they should go. Once we do, the students take it from there.
“The work primarily comes out of the Creative Specialization classes that Willie and I teach like Concepting, Portfolio and Advanced Portfolio, but more and more we’re also getting work into the show from students in our Graphic Design minor,” he said.
Allen said that while he was thrilled with his students’ performance at the competition, the feeling was bittersweet knowing he would soon say goodbye to his graduating seniors.
“I’m just really proud of our students for all kinds of reasons,” he said. “Our program is at a really sweet spot where we’ve got a lot of energy and talent; we’ve got a truly exceptional group all-around right now. You’d figure that we’d get used to this by now, but every year we miss our students when we have to send them off.”
The SMU winning entries are as follows:
Best Use of Copywriting ($500)
Grammarly—Kell Klopp ’20 and Allie Hartman ’20
Best of Category: Copywriting ($200)
Grammarly—Kell Klopp and Allie Hartman
Best of Category: Integrated Campaign ($200)
Grammarly—Kell Klopp and Allie Hartman
Richard Patrick Memorial Scholarship ($2,500)
Smile Reversal (photography series)—Isaac Cordova ’21
Kell Klopp and Allie Hartman’s Grammarly campaign also won Best Copywriting in TAI’s Portfolio Night & Exhibition. In addition, it is featured on Ads of the World, an advertising archive and community that showcases creative advertising from around the world.
“We thought a lot about when it is necessary to use Grammarly and found that the truth is Grammarly is all around the easiest way to be the best you can be,” said Klopp and Hartman in a joint statement. “We wanted our ads to show how simple of an app it is while highlighting the importance of using Grammarly.
“It’s not easy being an advertising student, and to be able to have our work awarded like this means a lot to us. We work hard and try our best, and we couldn’t do such amazing work without our outstanding professors,” the duo said.
The NSSC was the first competition in which Isaac Cordova has entered his Smile Reversal series.
“This photographic series explores the emotions we feel behind closed doors, going beyond the mask of ‘picture-perfectism,’” said Cordova. “On a path to become my most authentic self, this series came to life as I became more and more uncomfortable with how people wear a ‘mask’ meant to hide how they really feel inside. There is nothing more beautiful than a genuine expression.
“Winning the overall photography award at the NSSC is beyond rewarding. I’m proud to represent SMU and I take it as a sign to never stop creating!” Cordova said.
Altogether, nine SMU entries were accepted into this year’s competition. The full list of accepted work is as follows:
Integrated Campaign Category
Grammarly—Kell Klopp and Allie Hartman
Kong Chew Toys— Kell Klopp and Megan Cruikshank ’19
Out-of-home Category
Beyond Meat—Sam Smith ’21, Avery Bouch ’21 and Elijah Niemczyk ’21
Video / Commercial Category
Diptyque—Anna Rose Corell ’21 and Gaëlle Gachelin ’19
SelfControl App—Kell Klopp and Megan Cruikshank
Vinyl Me, Please—Charlie O’Brien ’20 and Will Sutter ’21
Copywriting Category
Grammarly—Allie Hartman and Kell Klopp
Kong Chew Toys—Kell Klopp and Megan Cruikshank
This fall, Professor Peter Noble’s undergraduate campaigns course partnered with the world’s largest manufacturer of professional dental products and technologies, Dentsply Sirona, for a unique B2B marketing challenge. In three teams, the students conducted three individual market analyses and audience surveys to conclude their capstone project with a fully developed marketing plan for how to increase visibility and drive attendance to the SureSmile multi-day education event. The winning team, Agency Incite, traveled to SureSmile 2020 in San Diego at the end of February to make their pitch live on stage.
“The submitted concepts provide valuable insights about our industry and user base. As creative strategies, they offer usable models, for example, to leverage user feedback or behavior or point out emerging trends and opportunities. For our company, this partnership returned significant assets in creative, research, and strategy,” said Dominique Mondou, Vice President Traditional and Digital Orthodontics.
Click here to learn more about campaign clients or contact Sandi Edgar for more information.
Congratulations to the following Temerlin Students who’ve won 2020 DSCV National Student Show awards! This program is a professionally judged creative competition and conference built for students and their educators. Stay tuned to see the award-winning work!
The AAF American Advertising Awards is one of the industry’s largest creative competitions, attracting nearly 35,000 professional and student entries each year through local club competitions. Temerlin creative students won NINE American Advertising Awards (ADDYs) at the 2020 AAF Dallas awards show last week. “Our students represented us well in front of the Dallas advertising community tonight and with so many gold, silver and Best of Show winners advancing on, we’ll keep representing SMU at the regional and national levels” explains Professor Mark Allen.
Creative students have worked very hard over the past semester to produce several award-winning campaigns, and we couldn’t be happier to see them succeed. Professor Willie Baronet shares: “I’m so proud of all our students for killing it tonight, especially Gaelle and Anna Rose for taking home BEST OF SHOW! And kudos to the TAI team for creating space for these students to flex their creative brilliance!”
Winners Include:
BEST OF SHOW
Anna Rose Corell & Gaëlle Gachelin / P3 (Magazine Advertising)
GOLD WINNERS
Anna Rose Corell & Gaëlle Gachelin / P3 (Magazine Advertising)
Sydney Bottum & Sophie Vos / Hello Fresh! (Magazine Advertising)
SILVER WINNERS
Olivia Childs / Keurig (Magazine Advertising)
Abby Coon & Charlie O’Brien / Slip (Poster)
Sam Smith, Avery Bouch, EJ Niemczyk / Beyond Meat (Integrated Campaigns)
Sam Smith, Avery Bouch, EJ Niemczyk / Beyond Meat (Illustration)
Olivia Childs & James Klopp / Native Deodorant (Illustration)
Anna Rose Corell & Gaëlle Gachelin / Diptyque (Animation or Special Effects)
SMU’s Temerlin Advertising Institute is home to three undergraduate advertising tracks specializing in their respective disciplines: Creative, Digital Media Strategy and Strategic Brand Management. Mimicking an advertising agency setting, NSAC unites the three tracks to collaborate on a multi-media marketing plan while providing national exposure for students to land internships and full-time opportunities. Hillery Lemon ’19 recounts her time on last year’s winning team as “A really valuable experience. Especially as a creative student, because I got to work with the other advertising specializations and see what it really takes to put a campaign together. It’s so satisfying seeing your work do well!”
The National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC) is the premier collegiate competition founded by the American Advertising Federation (AAF). Led by Professor Amber Benson, each team is asked to devise a completely integrated campaign and pitches their work to savvy advertising professionals which are judged at the district, semi-final, and national levels. Prior NSAC clients include Ocean Spray, Snapple, Nissan, Coca-Cola, State Farm (and more). This year it’s Adobe. Yes, that Adobe.
Collaboration, presentation, and strategic planning are invaluable skills for students preparing to enter the ad industry. The SMU Ad Team exists to nurture these skills and give students a chance to present their work to a real client and a panel of industry experts. And we’ve been pretty successful. Last year, SMU won 1st place at the NSAC District 10 Competition and was a national finalist with an insightful advertising campaign for Wienerschnitzel.
The SMU 2020 Ad Team: Professor Amber Benson, Kathryn Chavez, Sarah Jane Eckelkamp, Jackson Ferris, Avery Fuller-Monk, Sebastian Gutierrez, Caillie Horner, Sarah Katsikas, Meryn Kennedy, Lauren Kobayashi, Erin McCraw, Abhinav Nadella, Ankita Padarthy, Riley Preston, Susan Slaton, Lizzie Venditti, and Whitney Wilkerson.
How do I join?
Temerlin’s highest-performing students need to apply to compete on the NSAC stage. Applications open each fall, keep an eye on your email. Pony Up Team Adobe!
