VCU news

By Tom Gresham

The VCU Adcenter, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Mass Communication’s graduate program in advertising, received two coveted industry honors at the ATHENA Awards, which reward outstanding creativity in newspaper advertising.

Competing against a national field in September, the VCU Adcenter collected the grand prize in the student category and a gold prize in the general advertising category. The ATHENA Awards, presented in New York, are sponsored by the Newspaper Association of America (NAA). The Adcenter, a two-year graduate program, has collected eight ATHENA Awards since 1998.

The Adcenter’s success proved lucrative. The NAA contributed $50,000 to the Adcenter’s print advertising curriculum in honor of Cramer-Kasselt, a Chicago-based company that won the Best in Show prize at the awards ceremony. In addition, the grand prize in the student category earned the Adcenter program a $5,000 check.

It was just the latest success for the nationally recognized VCU program. In March, Creativity magazine ranked the Adcenter the No. 1 graduate advertising program in the country. The VCU program earned the top rank in each of three categories – overall quality, innovation and quality of the graduates.

Lauren Weinblatt was the art director on each of the Adcenter’s ATHENA-winning entries this year and was co-creative director on the gold-prize ad for Phil’s TV and Appliance. Joel Gryniewski served as the copywriter and co-creative director for the Phil’s TV and Appliance ad, while Heather English was the copywriter for the grand-prize ad for The Container Store. Each is a 2005 graduate of the Adcenter.

Rick Boyko, the director of the VCU Adcenter, served as creative director of The Container Store entry.

Weinblatt said receiving the ATHENA recognition was a thrill.

“Winning one award, let alone two, was a great surprise,” Weinblatt said. “Joel Gryniewski and I never imagined that two ad school kids who created an agency name (Blattski Worldwide) and ran a small space local ad could win a professional award, up there with agencies such as Crispin Porter + Bogusky.

“And Heather English and I were honored to have our student work chosen, especially because it stretched the rules of the competition,” Weinblatt said.

Weinblatt said the submission she and English prepared for The Container Store did not fit the competition specifications of a full-page newspaper advertisement. However, that technicality did not keep them from winning the top prize.

She credited lessons taught at the Adcenter for the team’s insistence on pursuing its vision.

“If I learned one thing at the Adcenter, it is to always push the envelope creatively,” said Weinblatt, who now teams with Gryniewski to work on accounts such as Washington Mutual and Redhook Beer for the Sedgwick Rd. agency in Seattle. “And it’s great to see the industry leaders who were in the jury reward risk taking and rule breaking.”

The Container Store ad conveyed the store’s potential to provide a container for a wide variety of materials, using the simple image of a newspaper in a plastic bag and the tag line, “The Container Store. Contain anything.” The Phil’s TV and Appliance advertisement sought to portray the store as a family-owned store capable of offering more personal service than larger chain stores. The ad read, “The big guys will overwhelm you. We’ll just whelm you.”

Boyko said students often underestimate the creative potential the medium of newsprint offers for advertising. He said he was pleased with the students’ award-winning work, pointing to The Container Store entry as a particularly “unique way to use the medium.”

“Their ad drove home the message that The Container Store was a neat place where you could get a container for just about anything,” Boyko said. “They did a great job.”