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School Of Communications

Ad Students Represent BYU and U.S. in Paris

By Michelle M. Mueller

It’s off to Paris for BYU advertising students Summer Holm, Hawken Vance and Kylie Cox, who were recently chosen to represent the United States at this year’s L’Oreal Brandstorm Competition.

Ad students

Brandstorm is an international competition involving teams of students who act as brand managers by analyzing the market, developing a marketing strategy, designing products and working with a real advertising agency to develop an advertising campaign.

Beginning at the university level, teams of three students each compete for the chance to represent their school at the national level. Once selected, the teams move on to compete nationally and are then selected to represent their nation at the international competition in Paris and defend their strategy face-to-face with top L’Oreal executives.

“One of the judges announced BYU as the winner and it didn’t register. All the sounds were suddenly muted,” said Summer Holm, a junior on the winning team. “I just started bawling. I was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t believe that we had just won. It was probably one of the most surreal moments of my life.”

After winning the preliminary competition in New York, Vance and Cox will join Holm in Paris to complete the three-member team and go on to represent the U.S. during the Brandstorm competition in June.

“We competed against six other universities that were selected from around the nation,” Vance said. “The winning group takes home about $15,000.” Vance, Cox and Holm will continue BYU’s legacy. BYU advertising students took second place at last year’s nationals and first place nationally and internationally two years ago, the first time a U.S. team had ever won the international competition.

For updates and more details visit www.byuadlab.com.

'Team Swagger”; Hawken Vance, Kylie Cox and Summer Holm from left to right

Source: BYU COMMS Newsletter