Courtesy of Chandra KennettThree seniors were recognized as finalists last Tuesday in the Chevy Super Bowl College Ad Challenge, a national competition of college students to create an idea for a commercial to run during next year’s game. The students, Hubert Cheung of the Olin School of Business, and Shlomo Goltz and Nathan Heigert from the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts, were among only four other teams from across the country selected to present their ideas to Chevrolet executives and their ad agency.
“Chevrolet Team 509” wined and dined with company executives, toured company headquarters and attended workshops on advertising – all before presenting their concept to Chevrolet on Monday morning. The winning team was announced later that day, but participants were legally bound to keep the results confidential until Chevrolet works out some remaining details, said a company spokesman.
“It’s probably the hardest part,” said Heigert. “I really want to tell everyone.”
Heigert served as chief illustrator for the team, designing the storyboards for the commercial. Goltz specializes in sound and motion design and helped relate the overall idea of the commercial to the Chevrolet executives. And Cheung, a marketing major, was charged with deciding how the ad would fit in with Chevrolet’s business goals.
“My job was to decide, ‘How will this ad help sell Chevrolet’s cars?'” said Cheung.
Cheung learned of the competition through the Adventures in Advertising group, a company he worked with on a marketing project last semester. He started asking around, looking for someone “art-oriented” who might be interested in the competition. On the day before the registration deadline, he found Goltz.
“It was complete luck that we bumped into each other,” said Cheung of Goltz, who was only an acquaintance at the time.
With the addition of Goltz, and then Heigert later, the team was building the diversity of talent that they felt was responsible for their success.
“In our three-person team, I had no idea about business. Hubert had no idea about visuals,” said Goltz. “I think we were very lucky in that we were the only team in the final round with a mixture of disciplines.”
Although Cheung acknowledged creativity as a necessary part of advertising, he bases the team’s success in getting to the final round more on the merit of their ideas.
“Advertisement is about selling a brand and a product, rather just making it look good,” said Cheung.
Regardless of how they made it to the finals, once there the team spent many hours and late nights focusing on presentation. Marketers at Campbell-Ewald, Chevrolet’s advertising firm, coached team members on how to properly present their ideas to the Chevrolet executives.
“Each team was provided professional support to develop their story boards,” said Kelly O’Neill, a Chevrolet advertising manager. “Each team did a fantastic job presenting their concepts.”
As part of developing its concept, Chevrolet has plans to produce a short, reality-TV spot for the weekend prior to the Super Bowl. Toward this end, TV cameras monitored the finalists the entire weekend, from the moment they got to the airport on Friday until they left Detroit three days later.
“We had cameras stuffed in our faces,” said Goltz. “It was surreal.”
Cheung echoed his teammate’s view when he recalled what would happen if the TV crew heard something they liked, but didn’t get on tape.
“They would say to us, ‘Oh wait, that was good, but there was background noise, so start over again,'” said Cheung. “It was very unnatural.”
As of now, the group has no plans for further collaboration. Friends and family of the team members and the public will have to wait until the Super Bowl to see the group’s hard work.