Thank God my hell week is finally over! As usual I had to do tons of “academic” work these past two weeks so I wasn’t able to post new entries. Anyway, for those of you keeping track, remember the AdSpeak competition which I joined for my Advertising class? Well guess what…I am a finalist for the campaign category! I couldn’t believe it myself, but it is true! From out of near 400 entries (for all four categories) my entry was chosen to be one of the 10 finalists per category.
The awarding ceremony happened last Feb.8. A lecture by prominent advertising practitioners was also held. Among those who spoke in the lecture were the Chairman Emeritus of J. Walter Thompson, Mr. Jose Javier Calero; Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of BBDO-Guerrero Ortega, Mr. David Guerrero; Chief Creative Officer for McCann Worldgroup Phils., Mr. Raul Castro; and EVP/Creative Director for Dentsu, Young, and Rubicam-Alcntara, Ms. Grace Chong.
Just a little recap: AdSpeak is an intercollegiate competition held every year at the Colegio de San Juan de Letran. This year’s theme is all about Advocacy Advertising. There are four categories: print, radio, TV, and campaign. I joined in the last. In the campaign category an entry must be composed of three advertisements in a medium, either print OR radio OR TV. There are two sets of awards encompassing all categories: Judges’ Choice and Students’ Choice. Judges’ Choice awardees are chosen by a panel of advertising practitioners. The Students’ Choice awardees, a first in AdSpeak history, are chosen by a panel of students from different universities. Several universities joined the competition: Letran, University of Asia and the Pacific (known for emphasis on advertising and marketing courses), University of Sto. Tomas, Ateneo de Manila University (strong show of force in the event), De La Salle University, and of course the one and only University of the Philippines (yehey!).
The funny thing is, unlike the other universities there is no advertising course offered in UP! Our professor, Eleanor Agulto, was the organizer of the event. In all fairness, Prof. Agulto taught our class a lot of things in just a short amount of time. Considering that most of us taking J151 are journalism majors, it was quite a surprise when four people from our class became finalists, one even won! Barry was a finalist for the print category, Mimi for the TV category, while Chino and I were finalists for the campaign category. Chino was the grand winner for the Judges’ Choice in the campaign category. Though none of us were able to attend the awarding ceremony since we all had classes, it was still so surreal to know that we were able to win in a field in which we have been only studying for three months! I just hope that this would be the start of my dreams of having a fruitful career in the world of advertising!
