UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA WINS GOLD IN INAUGURAL STUDENT CATEGORY OF THE 2025 HMC STRATEGIC EXCELLENCE AWARDS

The Hispanic Marketing Council (HMC), in partnership with the Ad Council, announced the winners of the inaugural Student Category today as part of the 2025 HMC Strategic Excellence Awards Powered by Collage Group. Charged with creating a compelling social impact campaign, University of Florida took home the coveted Gold award for its submission. University of Miami won Silver and University of Texas-Austin (UTNY Program) won Bronze.

This new award category was created to recognize multicultural marketing and advertising excellence among undergraduate students in 2025. “It is important to build a pipeline of culturally fluent and savvy marketers, and that begins at the collegiate level,” said Victor Paredes, chair of the HMC Strategic Excellence Awards Committee and executive director of cultural strategy at the Collage Group. “This award not only has the potential to become part of capstone classes at renowned universities, but it also builds bridges between the Hispanic marketing industry and academia while offering students a chance to connect with industry leaders.”

The Ad Council, the nation’s leader in leveraging communications to inspire action and accelerate change around the most pressing issues in the U.S., challenged students with a creative brief to develop a culture-forward marketing campaign based on the nonprofit’s overdose crisis initiative. Universities across the country submitted entries for evaluation by a prestigious panel of academia and marketing leaders.

“For students building a career in advertising and marketing, incorporating social impact into their work provides an unmatched opportunity to understand how great creative can drive real change,” said Michelle Hillman, chief campaign development officer at the Ad Council. “It is a real honor to recognize this next generation of industry leaders together with HMC.”

The competition was open to all undergraduate students at U.S. universities and submissions were limited to one team per institution, determined by a faculty sponsor. The winning team from University of Florida included team leader Christy Anasa, Dustin Garcia, Sara Gleim, Valentina Gomez, Lacie Luckett, Sara Myers, Kaicha Noel, Andrea Valdes-Sueiras and Astrid Weiner.

A new brief for the 2026 Student Excellence Award will be announced in January 2026. Universities are encouraged to incorporate the semester-long opportunity into capstone courses or extracurricular organizations for spring 2026.

About HMC: Founded in 1996 as the Association of Hispanic Advertising Agencies, the Hispanic Marketing Council is the national trade organization of all marketing, communications, and media firms with trusted Hispanic expertise.