Hatch Awards: Eight Advertising Students Win Campaign Competitions
By Andy Slaughter, a first-year BU COM graduate student in public relations and The COMmunicator’s editor in chief.
Eight undergraduate COM students celebrated campaign awards on Wednesday from The Hatch Awards, the country’s largest regional creative advertising show hosted at the House of Blues.
Judged by many of the most accomplished creative directors in the nation, students in Professor Edward Boches’ Portfolio 2 course took home two Hatch Bowls, one silver, one bronze, and four merit awards, earning six of the nine student awards in the show.
“To be honest, we would have won more, but we footed the entry fees ourselves and only had so much money,” Boches said. “Next year I’ll be launching a fundraiser to add to our award show entry coffers.”
Allison Penn holding her Silver Hatch Award.
Alexandra Mattaway, a recent COM graduate and Allison Penn, a COM senior, won the Silver Bowl for their clever Purell campaign. Focusing on our generation’s obsession with cleanliness, their “Do you really want to touch that?” movement turned places such as gas pumps and shopping carts into advertising platforms.
Eleanor Rask, COM ’15, and Kristina Saliba, COM ’16, hold Bronze Hatch Award.
Taking home the Bronze however, recent COM graduate Eleanor Rask and Kristina Saliba, a COM senior, celebrated their win in an effort to support Girls Who Code, an organization that works to encourage women to pursue careers in technology. One of their most notable posters depicted a line outside of the men’s restroom at a developers conference- a clear jab at the absence of women attendees at these events.
Despite these brilliant campaigns, creative directors boasted about Danni McGovern and Madison Francois’ campaign, which spoke about the brutal feedback that BU advertising students receive at Creative Café, a bi-annual event that allows COM alums to review student work.
For Boches, these wins are a clear representation of the quality of COM and the hard work his CM437 students put forth in class.
“Awards like these give students a sense and taste of the energy in the industry, and makes them more confident that the rigor we put them through will pay off.”
Rounding out the eight winners, recent COM graduates Eirinn Spekter and Evan Gott, garnered attention from judges, earning a Merit Award for their witty campaign promoting travel to Cuba. Their efforts made such an impact that the prominent Boston agency, Hill Holiday, brought them on full-time. Spekter and Gott are now on the same team at the agency, one working as an art director, the other as a copywriter. Both alums are already off to shoot their first TV commercial, according to Boches.
In their 55thyear, The Hatch Awards are hosted by The AD Club, an organization for marketing, advertising, and communications professionals in New England.
Andy Slaughter is a first-year graduate student in public relations and The COMmunicator’s editor in chief.
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Originally published at bucommunicator.com on October 22, 2015.
