Rice University’s Bill Courtney, Director of Marketing, contacted Locke Bryan Productions about making a 30 second spot to run during the Rice vs. UT football game.  The spot would run on the Jumbotron at Reliant Stadium and air nationally on ESPN’s College GameDay. 

With only 3 weeks until kick-off and a limited budget, Bill Courtney brought us a terrific idea for an “unconventional” spot. Rice owned the rights to historic footage of a speech made by President John F. Kennedy  in 1962 to the incoming freshman class at Rice University.  In the speech, Kennedy muses about the choice to go to the moon and Rice playing the University of Texas. He states that we do these things “not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

Kenny Benitez created a graphic treatment using the footage of Kennedy’s speech with an overlay of historic to modern day photos of the Rice Campus and students.  The spot ends with a voice over by Chris Patton, of Pastorini Bosby, saying “Rice, celebrating unconventional wisdom for nearly 100 years.” Bob Vance at audiobob chose the music and created the audio mix.

Watch “Unconventional Wisdom”

by Camille Bryan