Last Monday morning, 24 Portfolio Night All-Stars wandered into the ADC Gallery, strangers to each other save for a private Facebook group and a low key meet and greet the night before. A few hours later, they were grouped into six teams, given a creative brief for a global brand and expected to work magic.

On Friday, the magic revealed itself.

As with every other morning during Portfolio Night All-Stars 2014, the day began with breakfast treats and a notable guest speaker. For this grand finale, the double dozen was blessed with a visit from Michael Ventura, CEO and Founder of the design and innovation company Sub Rosa. Michael spoke about a number of Sub Rosa’s projects, particularly its lauded collaboration with GE to redefine the mammography experience. He also talked about starting Sub Rosa, showing the All-Stars that although they are all well on a path towards working at an advertising agency, perhaps there are other directions for their ambition to take them.

After Michael’s session, the heat was turned back on, as the six teams now had a few short hours to be ready for one of the biggest moments of their budding careers. Each team was granted 30 minutes of private time in the ADC conference room, in order to run through their final presentation, getting their PowerPoint and Keynote slides just right and perfecting their timing. Each team would only have ten minutes for their big moment on stage; one moment over that mark and the plug would be pulled on their spotlight.

Finally, at 2 PM, all teams submitted their decks and randomly drew their order number, leaving them with a full hour to decompress, take a breather and calm their frazzled nerves before putting it all on the line.

At 3 PM, ADC was once again buzzing with energy. This was finally the moment of truth. The panel of judges filed into the ADC Gallery, including JWT New York Executive Creative Director Frederic Bonn; Viktoria Wallner, Global Creative Director & Brand Management at PUMA; and Joel Lunenfeld, VP Global Brand Strategy at Twitter.

“We are not talking about ads, we are talking about acts.”

Mayank Bhayana, Team MOBIUM

One by one the six teams presented their plans for PUMA and its partnership with the world famous Arsenal FC. Beginning with Team SLIPSTREAM’s mock press conference and ending with Team ICRA’s “social media momentum”  tactics, all six groups laid out all of their hard work, impressing not only the judges but also the ADC staff, who had observed the evolution of their efforts over the past five days.

Alas, there can only be one winner, and the top honors for ADC Portfolio Night All-Stars 2014 went to Team ROMA, comprised of Stacy Randolph of Chicago, Gabriel Lavallée of Montreal, Eric “Gordo” Gorodetsky of Boston and Sydney Goldstein of Kansas City.The winning quartet was awarded the all-new ADC Portfolio Night All-Stars Medallion, likely the first of many heavy trophies they’ll be collecting over their careers.

That said, and as clichéd as this may sound, all 24 of the All-Stars were winners this week. As their individual banners were removed from the rafters and given as keepsakes, a remarkable thing happened: amongst all the hits and high-fives, the All-Stars started autographing each others banners, making them even more personal and thus solidifying the bond they had all forged over the past five days. Each All-Star now has 23 friends from all corners of the globe, and if they are anything like last year’s inaugural All-Stars, their adventure together is only beginning.

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ADC would like to thank Portfolio Night All-Stars partners JWT, Twitter and Shutterstock for their support, as well as olloclip, Nude Audio, Baron Fig, Pantone and Luerzer’s Archive for helping us give our guests the All-Star treatment. And of course, a huge thanks to the 24 All-Stars themselves. You’re part of the family now.

Portfolio Night 13 is scheduled for Wednesday, May 20, 2015. Please contact Sarah West at sarah@adcglobal.org for more information on bringing PN13 to your city.