After an entire semester of preparation, a team of seven advertising seniors took home the first place award at the District 7 National Student Advertising Competition this weekend – the first time the University has taken home the top prize since 2008.

The students, representatives from a 37-person advertising capstone class taught jointly by Manship School of Mass Communication associate professors Lance Porter and Anne Osborne, were among seven other teams competing in the competition to produce the best advertising campaign for Glidden Paint, a national paint company available only at Wal-Mart.

To conceptualize their presentation, all eight district teams were allowed to work with a hypothetical $10 million budget and a five-month campaign period.

Kristen Hinton, Joe Wanko, Johnny Sciortino, Jesse

Barnett, Hannah Grantham, Lindsey Beckwith and Lauren Sibley were the seven students on the presentation team.

Sciortino added to the team’s achievements by taking home the prize of Best Presenter, an award that doesn’t necessarily go to a person on the winning team.

The team calls itself “Hodges 24/7,” referencing the round-the-clock hours spent in Hodges Hall it took to make the 20-minute presentation a success.

Now that they’ve won the district competition, which took place in Jackson, Miss., the students will move on to compete on the national level at a conference taking place this summer in Phoenix, Ariz.

“We can’t divulge much information about the campaign because we don’t want other teams to know what we will present at nationals,” Barnett said. “But we did try to make our idea original and try something new.”

While the district competition was limited to schools in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee, the national competition will have more competitors.

Hodges 24/7 will compete against 14 other teams that won first place at their respective district competitions.

If the team wins the national competition, Glidden Paint could use aspects of its presentation in a real campaign. The University would also receive a monetary prize. 

Hodges 24/7 brought a non-traditional professional approach to the competition that gave it an edge on the competition, while other teams’ presentations were more theatrical, Porter said.

Osborne said the win was “bittersweet” for her because it will be both her first and last, as she will step down from her University position to take a new job at Syracuse University teaching race, gender and media classes.

 “It’s a nice way to go,” Osborne said. “I’m definitely ending on a high note.”

“I’ve taken a lot away from this and will really use this in my career.”