Conversations with People that Did Not Win One Show College Competition

Tonight was the awards ceremony for the One Show College Competition, for which schools nationwide turned in their top student portolios. See some here.

Doritos -- which in the last couple of years has devoted much of its promotional budget to lobbing cash at "creative" users (1, 2, 3) -- also solicited a campaign brief seeking "Doritos advertising that is iconic as Doritos."

The word "iconic" sparked interesting conversation after the show. Links to video below.

After a speech about how "bad-ass!!!" all the entries were, Marketing Director Rudy Wilson of Doritos announced the winners of its campaign pitch competition.

A hush fell over the crowd, which by then was totally lubricated. The honor went to Guarav De and Victoria Weeks of VCU Brandcenter.

Loath to discourage so many potential evangelists, Wilson told the crowd to keep their heads up because they're all gonna be very successful. (There's something for the resume: May 2008 -- Blessed with guaranteed success by Rudy Wilson of Doritos.)

One Show Student Gold Pencil winners follow:

- For Print, Eliot Nordstrom and Phil Van Buren of University of Colorado. (See concept here, here and here.)
- For Interactive, Tomas Jonsson and Carl Fredrik Jannerfeldt of Berghs School of Communication. (Partial concept here. The plug-in let users replace ad banners with customized content. Tagline: "What if the internet was just like a bag of Doritos. Filled only with the stuff you like." I was standing nearby when their names were called. They were incomparably stoked. That's them on the left.)
- For Cause/Issue Poster Design, Ronald J. Cala, II of Tyler School of Art at Temple.

Austin O'Connor from the University of Colorado, Boulder was also recognized as a recipient of the Patrick Kelly Scholarship.

No Gold Pencils were awarded for the Television or Innovative Marketing categories. See the Bronze, Silver and Merit winners at the website, which I don't think has been updated yet.

Shortly after the awards, the party started to cool. Here are some post-Pencil moments on camera (which the subjects will undoubtedly regret by tomorrow, and which I'm starting to regret already):

- "We shot a real bear, up to here. I almost killed my art director."
- "To only do a Bronze and a Silver in the most nominated categories just seems a little weird."
- "We took three flavors, and we ... kind of ... visualized them as a Rube Goldberg."
- "Honestly? I was expecting better stuff to have won a Gold."

Hang in there, guys. I have it on good authority that we're all going to be way successful.

See more photos from the show.