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Students win advertising ADDY

By Lori Runkle
Greenlee Web Team

On Feb. 26 the Advertising Professionals of Des Moines presented a gold ADDY Award to ISU students Michael Dusing and April Pearson.

Both students are Greenlee School seniors majoring in advertising. This gold ADDY Award was the only gold award given for student work.

The Advertising Professionals is the organization that locally administers the ADDY Awards, and Dusing and Pearson received the award for their series of print advertisements for the P&D Financial Institution.

Pearson and Dusing created their ADDY-winning campaign in Associate Professor Joel Geske’s advertising portfolio class.

“We took a pretty straightforward institution and made it more fun. Since it was fictional, we gave it our own brand identity.”

P and D represent the first letters in Pearson's and Dusing's last names.

One of the winning P&D print advertisements reads:

P&D Financial “We promise to be unprofessional … because you’re not just Ms. or Mr.—you’re April or Michael. We’re more than business acquaintances; we’re friends."

Dusing explained that they wanted to take a boring campaign and make it more interesting for their target audience.

“We were marketing to 20 or 30 year-olds or students who are fresh out of college. Our campaign takes an irreverent tone without being rude.”

“Writing is my forte and designing is Mike’s forte. It was nice working as a team,” Pearson said.

Pearson acknowledged that winning the ADDY Award “baits agencies to (want to) see our portfolios. It’s a good way to get them interested in our work.”

The American Advertising Federation (AAF) sponsors the ADDY Awards, and according to the AAF Web site, there are over 60,000 entries annually: “… the ADDY Awards are the world’s largest and arguably toughest advertising competition.”

The awards recognize all forms of advertising and the AAF “conducts the ADDY Awards through its 200 member advertising clubs and 15 districts. It is the only creative awards program administered by the advertising industry for the industry,” the AAF Web site goes on to explain.

From Des Moines, local winners proceed to 14 regional competitions, and those winners then go to the national finals. Within the national AAF structure, the Advertising Professionals of Des Moines belongs to the 9th District, which includes clubs in Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas, according to the organization’s Web site.

“I’m not sure where the next level will be,” Pearson said. “The Ad Pros of Des Moines are taking care of entering us into the next level of competition.”

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