Advertising student Catharine DeLong is creative, unique, and always strives to have the “oddest idea in the room.” DeLong will speak at the April School of Communications Convocation this month. Following graduation, DeLong will move to Los Angeles where she will work on Apple’s advertising at the ad agency Media Arts Lab.
Originally from Wenatchee, Washington, DeLong loved storytelling from a young age. After studying international business for two years at BYU Hawaii, DeLong was introduced to the advertising program at BYU in Provo by a few friends.
“I realized very quickly that I was studying the wrong thing,” Delong said. “Advertising was exactly what I wanted to be studying.”
While on a mission in Toronto, Canada, DeLong applied to BYU and was accepted. Immediately upon her acceptance she did everything in her power to get into the advertising program.
From being an ADLAB Creative Director, to winning a plethora of prestigious awards DeLong has had huge success in the ad program. She attributes much of this success to her youthful imagination.
“I have an ability to see stories, environments and cultures that don’t yet exist around a product and to tell those stories in such a way that people believe,” DeLong said. “It’s great fun to take a business idea and create an entire world around it.”
Recently DeLong won the most promising multi-cultural student award from the American Advertising Foundation (AAF), which is awarded to approximately 40 students in the United States with the purpose of promoting diversity of thought in advertising.
DeLong also received three gold Addys, two silver Addys and a Judge’s Choice Award from the Regional 2017 AAF competition.
Before being admitted to the program, DeLong wrote a commercial that became part of a 7 million dollar TV media buy for the Ad Council. The TV spot aimed to stop buzzed driving.
“There’s nothing cooler than writing words on paper and then being on set and seeing it all come to life,” DeLong said. “It really is an honor and it is really exciting to see it come to life and materialize.”
DeLong said she will miss BYU and especially the devotionals and forums after graduation, and she hopes to still tune-in.
“In the creative industry we’re looking for inspiration all the time and I think the most powerful inspiration comes from God,” DeLong said. “Every time I leave devotional or a forum I get a new idea that was somehow tied to what I just heard. You’ve got to surround yourself with goodness to make it.”
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