In one of the final advertising competitions of the awards season, The BYU AdlLab won the Collegiate Effies competition with a client challenge from BOSE, with the team of Sophie Haws, Isabel Huish, Hope Knudson, and Dillon Hansen awarded first place for their campaign “Make Your Future Sound” and crowned National Champions of the Collegiate Effies for 2021. (We also won this competition last year in 2020 for IBM and in 2019 for Subaru)
Modeled after the Effie Awards U.S. competition, the Effie Collegiate competition tasks students with creating marketing communications solutions to address business challenges for real clients. And rewards the advertising ideas that are not only creative but strategically sound through research and are evaluated to be the most effective. It’s a coveted award to win!
This was the largest version of the competition they have ever done with hundreds of teams and thousands of students competing because they ran it over the full academic school year of Fall and Winter semesters, and I ran this in the New Business class as a project and then across the AdLab so as many students as possible could participate. The BYU AdLab was blessed to have 7 teams named quarterfinalists, 4 named semi-finalists (both the most of any University participating), and 1 of the two national finalist teams. And as you know now, we also have the National Champion! They also happen to be juniors, so we have this special team until next year.
The judges from BOSE were so complimentary of the team, and how they really captured a powerful and ownable idea that perfectly aligns their company values and heritage with the insights around today’s Gen-Z consumer for future success. And then they articulated and presented it in such a powerful way the BOSE team said they cried and felt chills throughout the pitch. Special thanks to Hailey, Pat, and Jason for helping me with his team. We’re really proud of this team!
And the BOSE judges were so impressed they invited the team to come to BOSE headquarters to present to the expanded marketing department and the C-Suite decision makers. So Boston and Framingham. MA, here we come!