VCU News Center – VCU Adcenter students win national award

News releases and media advisories

For immediate release:
5/25/2007

Tom Gresham
VCU Communications and Public Relations
(804) 828-6051
tmgresham@vcu.edu

VCU Adcenter students win national award

First row: (left to right) Elisabeth Vanzura, Global Marketing Director of Cadillac; Zoe Bell, VCU Adcenter student; Katherine Capocelli, VCU Adcenter student; Carmen Velazquez, VCU Adcenter student. Second row: (left to right) Joe Quattrone, VCU Adcenter student; Slate Donaldson, VCU Adcenter student; John Gasloli, National Advertising Manager of Cadillac. Back row: Don Just, professor of Creative Brand Management at the VCU Adcenter.

A team of Virginia Commonwealth University Adcenter students on Wednesday captured the championship of the Cadillac National Case Study Competition, an annual marketing contest that featured 70 schools and 1,200 students this year.

VCU Adcenter students Joe Quattrone, Katherine Capocelli, Zoe Bell, Slate Donaldson and Carmen Velazquez received an all-expenses-paid trip to Detroit, where they made a final presentation to a panel of senior Cadillac executives and the account team from Modernista!, Cadillac’s ad agency. The Adcenter team defeated a team from the University of New Mexico’s Anderson School of Management, which had produced the competition’s winning team the previous two years.

The VCU Adcenter team that won the title was formed in a class taught by Don Just, a professor of creative brand management. The team included students pursuing graduate degrees in creative brand management, copywriting and art design.

“This is a terrific accomplishment and is yet another validation of how our curriculum, with its focus on collaboration, is ahead of any other in the country,” said Rick Boyko, managing director of the VCU Adcenter.

Teams submitted PowerPoint presentations addressing the contest’s case study. Two finalists were selected in both the graduate and undergraduate school categories and flown to Detroit to make formal presentations, which included a 25-minute PowerPoint presentation and a question-and-answer session.

Just said the judges spoke highly of the Adcenter students’ presentation.

“They didn’t tell us anything we could have done better,” Just said. “They said the effort was the most comprehensive and the most on point. The strategy was dead on. I don’t think we could have asked for a better review.”

The winning students will split a $3,000 prize.

About VCU and the VCU Medical Center:

Virginia Commonwealth University is a major, urban public research university with national and international rankings in sponsored research. Located on two downtown campuses in Richmond, VCU enrolls more than 32,000 students in 205 certificate and degree programs in the arts, sciences and humanities. Sixty-five of the programs are unique in Virginia, many of them crossing the disciplines of VCU’s 15 schools and one college. MCV Hospitals and the health sciences schools of Virginia Commonwealth University compose the VCU Medical Center, one of the nation’s leading academic medical centers. For more, see www.vcu.edu.

About the VCU Adcenter:

Started in 1996, the VCU Adcenter is the first graduate program in advertising to combine business-oriented communications strategy and brand management tracks with a creative program for art directors and copywriters in a business setting. It was formed to develop the skills of talented post-graduates, enabling them to enter the business world with a highly competitive portfolio of collaborative thinking. The VCU Adcenter is the graduate advertising and branding program for the School of Mass Communications at Virginia Commonwealth University. The program offers four tracks: Art Direction, Copywriting, Creative Brand Management and Communications Strategy. VCU Adcenter students earn a Masters of Science degree in mass communications with a concentration in advertising. It is a two-year, full time program that begins each fall.