Advertising Students Receive National Recognition

Advertising students from the School of Mass Communications swept a number of awards at the American Advertising Federation’s 2007 Western Virginia Addy Awards in Roanoke earlier this month. The VCU students were recognized for their advertising work with four Gold, six Silver and one Judges-pick Addy Awards.

Assistant professor of Advertising Bridget Camden said she is proud of the accomplishments of her students.

“It is great seeing their long hours and hard work start to pay off for them,” she said. “Winning a student advertising award won’t get them a job, but it is great on the resume.”

All gold and silver-awarded entries moved on to the Third District Addy Awards to compete against student work from Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina in early April. Winning work from the district level goes to the national-level competition soon after that.

The prestigious judges-pick award in the student category went to advertising seniors Chip Stevens and Kyle Asay for their campaign for McCanns Oatmeal.

“There was a lot of good work submitted,” Stevens said. “(Our award) came as a surprise, but I’m very proud that we got it.”

The award-winning work originated as a class assignment in Camden’s senior-level Portfolio Development classes, MASC 450 and MASC 451. Camden encourages her students to enter work in competitions each semester.

Assistant professor Will Sims currently teaches sections of the portfolio classes and in the MATX PhD program.

“These students are demonstrating the kind of leadership that ranks them and VCU School of Mass Communications among the best in the nation,” he said.

Other competitions where VCU advertising students’ work has been recognized before include the annual New York One Show, annual Richmond show and publications in the prestigious CMYK magazine, which serves as a respected trend-setting publication in the industry on an international level.

For student-work samples, visit Camden's Web site.