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By Hannah Stewart (Comm’19)

Oliver Pollock is proof that ideas can come from anywhere.

One night, as he was drifting off to sleep, two words popped into his head: “mayo moisturizer.” He grabbed his phone, opened the notes app and wrote it down. The next day, he wrote a pitch centering the idea and presented it to his campaign team.

They loved it. And so did judges at this year’s Denver One Show competition, who awarded the campaign Best of Show and a gold medal at the award show. But “” wasn’t the only winner—in fact, CU ��«����Ƶ swept the student category, with 12 CMCI students earning recognition.

“It felt amazing,” Pollock (StratComm’24) said. “We stayed up in the studio multiple nights grinding these campaigns out: making videos, scripts and everything as real as possible. Being recognized is so fulfilling.”

An important component of CMCI classes is hands-on project work done on behalf of real-world clients and brands, giving students access to professionals and challenging them to apply their lessons in creatively solving problems. Pollock and the other strategic communication students completed these campaigns for various classes, including a portfolio course where students are tasked with taking briefs from real life clients—such as Kraft Foods, Velveeta, Dove and NotCo—and creating campaigns.

It’s important for students to develop relationships with their peers and professors alike when taking these portfolio classes. That’s why they’re usually taught by professors with agency experience, like Jeff Gillette, an assistant teaching professor who worked in advertising for more than 15 years.

Over the course of the semester, after rounds of ideation, feedback and refinement, students submit their campaigns to the , a national awards competition run by The One Club for Creativity. Since the college was formed in 2015, nearly 40 student projects have claimed national awards from One Club; this year, four campaigns received merit awards: “The Beauty Inside,” “Dove’s Real Beauty Database,” "Mac Couture" and “Cheese-mation.”

“I was happy for the students because it means they will have something that will help them in their job hunt and career,” Gillette said. “In the future, we want to push students and ourselves to turn these national merits into medals. At the Denver show, I was impressed that we swept the show."

Finding inner beauty

For “,” students removed the branding from packaged bars of Dove soap, opting to instead showcase artwork to the inside of the box for buyers to find.

Coco Loomis (StratComm’24), who worked on “Mac Couture” and “The Beauty Inside,” said she enjoyed working on the Dove campaign “because it was completely driven by the art direction. One day, someone said ‘beauty’s on the inside,’ and suggested we take that literally. It was so amazing to take conceptual ideas and put them into play.”

Both " and “” leaned on nostalgia to promote Velveeta and its “La Dolce Velveeta” campaign. “Mac Couture” reimagined noodle necklaces made by kids in arts classes and as luxury symbols. Cheese-mation went a step further.

“We were just coming up with as many ideas as possible and thought about how we all grew up with Wallace and Gromit,” said Mateo Perez-Lara (StratComm’24). “While we were working on it, we heard about a clay shortage that threatened the studio, and we saw this shortage as a way for Velveeta to come in as a hero to save clay animation.”

Of those three campaigns, “The Beauty Inside” and Cheese-Mation also won silver awards at the local Denver Awards. Loomis was also part of a gold-winning team, with Pollock, for . Pollock was also on another Dove team, the .

“It’s cool because now I’m working on Dove in my job with Edelman, in New York,” Pollock said. “In school, I was an art director, and now I’m a copywriter—so it’s a little different, but there are definitely similarities.”

Loomis, an art director at Highdive, in Chicago, echoed this sentiment, saying that opportunities to compete in competitions like One Show through CMCI prepared her and her classmates for the real world.

Like in the professional world, competitions like the One Show are key for students looking to boost their resumes and prove their worth. According to Gillete, agencies and individuals alike compete to gain recognition and attract potential clients.

“Similar to agencies, students competing help CU become known as a school that can educate our students at a high level,” he said. “And if we’re known as a school that wins awards and does really good work, that helps with recruitment.”

As the only participant still in the Denver area, Perez-Lara—who just completed an internship with Fortnight Collective—was the only one of the award winners able to make it to the October awards show.

“It was a lot of fun. Being able to win something as a student and be in the spotlight was magical,” said Perez-Lara, who’s looking to work in major advertising hubs when his internship concludes. “I was fortunate enough to be with really smart, creative people, and it wouldn’t have been possible without a great mentor like Professor Gillette. I love the whole strategic communication community we were able to work with, as well.”