March 20, 2025
Photo by Nate Brown
Strategic Communication students at the University of Missouri School of Journalism recently took home 15 local awards from the American Advertising Federation’s annual ADDY awards in Kansas City, Missouri. The students will now compete for a spot in the national finals during the upcoming regional competition.
The wins included five Gold Awards for teams from MOJO Ad and AdZou, the School of Journalism’s student-staffed ad agencies. An AdZou campaign created for the 2024 National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC) also won Best in Show, beating out all other student entries.
“It’s wonderful to see our students continue to get this kind of recognition showcasing all the aspects of our program, from the capstones to the creative classes,” Jon Stemmle, professor and chair of strategic communication, said. “Our NSAC teams specifically have been among the elite in the nation over the last decade, so I’m thrilled that they earned Best in Show for their work with Tide.”
The NSAC team’s “Break up with Hot” campaign for Tide sought to encourage consumers to switch from hot to cold water when washing laundry, connecting that theme to breaking up with a significant other or trying a traditionally hot dessert (such as lava cake) in ice cream form.
“I am continuously blown away by this team, the work we created, and the amazing projects each of my teammates continues to produce post-graduation,” said Carson Bierman, BJ ’24, a creative lead on the team, in a LinkedIn post. “I feel immense gratitude for these people — their talent, and most importantly, their friendships.”
MOJO Ad’s Team Atlas earned more honors than any other team from the School of Journalism, including two Gold Awards for animation or special effects and cinematography. Both awards recognized work on a campaign promoting the Artemis project, NASA’s program aiming to once again land humans on the moon.
“The team was so fantastic, they devoted so much time and care and they were so detail-oriented on every part of the process,” said senior Abigail Klapatauskas, account manager for Team Atlas. “They are so incredibly humble and would say that they weren’t expecting it. I think they absolutely deserve it.”
The Golds came for two videos produced by Atlas; one that introduced the members of the team itself, and another intended to launch the campaign. The team and fellow MOJO Ad teams Sonder, Chroma and Muse were also recognized for the quality of their campaigns, logos, social media efforts and other elements.
But not all winners were part of large teams. Solo entrant Phoebe Hendon, also a senior, won Silver for — aptly — a poster promoting theme park Silver Dollar City. Seniors Lauren Graham and Jordyn Johnson shared a Silver for “creative elements — campaign,” a category that invites entries involving the use of AI.
Embracing AI
Graham serves as an art director in MOJO Ad and Johnson is a copywriter for AdZou, but their project came about as an assignment for Professor Frank Corridori’s creative portfolio class. They were tasked with creating print ads and a larger ad campaign for Vespa, an Italian scooter company.
“It’s an Italian brand, so we had this idea to integrate Italian art,” Graham said. “So, in order to do that, we used AI to basically recreate the style of different Italian paintings.”
The results are striking: The subject of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus sits atop a seafoam-colored scooter as it skates over the ocean on a shell; Michelangelo’s David poses with a cream-colored variety that seems like it, too, could be made of marble; and an image of the Mona Lisa on her own Vespa encourages consumers to “paint your own path.”
Johnson, who was in charge of writing copy for the print ads, noted that a core part of the idea was Vespa’s fondness for taglines related to “the art of living.”
“We were trying to highlight things that people use to make art, like carving or painting,” Johnson said. “So, the David one says, ‘the world is a blank slate,’ and the Mona Lisa says, ‘the world is your canvas.’”
Both said the experience was their most significant use of AI up to that point, and they credited Corridori for promoting its use as a learning tool and a way to express ideas that might otherwise be difficult to realize.
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