Helena Hargraves, a student from Southern Methodist University, dared to take on the challenge of making the invisible visible. Her campaign for Skout's Honor Pet Odor Eliminator, aptly titled “Tame the Odor,” didn’t just mask the problem—it confronted it head-on. This Silver-winning project in the 2024 New Talent Awards displays Helena's relentless drive to transform ordinary pet care into an extraordinary advertising narrative. The future is bright, and Helena is just getting started.

By: Helena Hargraves, Student, Southern Methodist University’s Temerlin Advertising Institute

Picture a mad scientist with free range in their laboratory. That’s the approach I took when creating “Tame the Odor.” Skout’s Honor was my first advertising campaign as a student. I had no idea what a creative brief was or where to look for inspiration, and I could barely make a mask in Photoshop. However, I was a dry sponge ready to absorb all the information and skills needed for a successful advertising campaign. 

I remember waking up in a panic; the one day I absolutely had to make it to class on time, I slept through all of my alarms. It was brand selection day in class, and I was already 40 minutes late. Soaked in sweat from the extraordinary Dallas heat, I hastily looked over the brands that my classmates had not chosen. With limited options left, I chose Skout’s Honor. Without knowing much about the brand, I thought to myself, “I think I can do something interesting with pets and smell; it seems cool enough.” Little did I know that conveying scent through a print ad is extremely difficult, and I was headed towards a long road full of sharp turns and many hurdles. 

I initially started by sketching thumbnail after thumbnail, allowing all of my ideas to pour out of my Sharpie onto paper. I soon realized I needed outside inspiration to spark that golden idea. I stumbled upon an award-winning campaign that Grey (Paris) did for Febreze’s pet odor spray about 15 years ago and was immediately inspired. I loved how I could smell the unmistakable dog scent without actually smelling it. It was a brilliant and well-executed way of explaining that your furniture smells like a dog. But I wanted to take the idea even further—as if to say that, sometimes there are places in our homes (and cars) that come to smell so much like our furry friends that it’s as if these spaces have become one with our pets. And so, we need to “tame” the odor. 

After making hundreds of thumbnails and finally landing on a viable concept for my campaign, it was time to transform my idea into comps. Photoshop was a mountain I was not ready to climb, so I made my first comps on Canva. Boy, was that a mistake. I remember my professor chiding me in class for using Canva, as it was not a professional design tool. Alas, it was time for me to finally start learning how to use Photoshop. 

Being a student with zero budget, I struggled to find affordable high-resolution images that could easily be manipulated with the few skills I had in Photoshop. I then stumbled upon Midjourney, or what I thought was Midjourney (more on that later). I experimented with fake Midjourney and generative AI in Photoshop to try and morph a dog’s head onto a carpet—it looked horrible. After many attempts, I showed one of my better (but still terrible) comps to a peer in a class, deeply embarrassed by it. I vividly remember hearing snickers behind me as other classmates looked at the atrocity on my laptop. I knew then and there that I needed to go back to the drawing board. I listed every single dog feature I could think of, then tried to match them with different furniture items and, eventually, a car trunk. I spent days trying out various iterations of dog features morphed into furniture items, slowly improving my Photoshop skills. I finally landed on a tongue morphed into a furry car trunk, a nose morphed into an ottoman, and a bed morphed with slobbery jowls hanging off the bottom like sheets. With the deadline for this campaign fast approaching, I met with various professors to review my work. This is when my creative production professor kindly pointed out that the generative AI technology I was using was not, in fact, Midjourney. I had less than a week to learn new software and recreate all three ads. Plus, after weeks of brainstorming, I still hadn’t settled on a tagline. The tagline was born two days before I left to go back home for Christmas break. I came across the word “tame,” and immediately, the tagline clicked. I spent most of my Christmas break on my living room couch, staying up well into the early hours of the morning, finding the perfect images, editing, waiting for feedback, and then making corrections. I had a vision and was determined to bring it to life. After two weeks of virtually no sleep and an immense amount of hard work, “Tame the Odor” was finally finished. 

I had no idea this campaign would receive as much notoriety and recognition as it did. When Skout’s Honor (the real company) recognized my work on LinkedIn, reposted it, and sent me some of their products, I was floating. 

Winning a Silver New Talent award from Graphis and having the opportunity to share my story is a dream come true. It’s a testament to all the hard work I put into making this campaign successful and my passion for advertising. I learned so much while working on this campaign, but the most important lesson I learned was that embracing failure is so important. Learning how to fail and not take it as a reflection of who you are is critical to succeeding in advertising. I keep this lesson in mind for every campaign I work on. Be open to failure; it strengthens your creativity. 

My best advice to share amongst my fellow creatives is if you are deeply passionate about something, don’t just follow it; sprint! Your passion and desire to succeed are all you have to keep you motivated. While it may be brutal at the moment, make sacrifices, work hard, and put your all into everything you do because it does pay off one way or another. 

Going into the future, I have no idea what’s in store for me. I would love to bring this campaign to life, and I have been communicating with Skout’s Honor about possibly making that happen. After completing a summer internship at Barbarian in NYC, I am excited to return to Dallas with newfound knowledge and motivation to crush my final year at SMU. I hope to land another awesome creative internship after I graduate with the hopes of becoming a full-time junior art director. This is just the start of my career, and I am excited to work hard, learn a lot, and make a meaningful difference in the advertising world.

Helena Hargraves is an aspiring art director and rising senior at Southern Methodist University’s Temerlin Advertising Institute. She is majoring in advertising with a creative specialization and minoring in graphic design. When she isn’t creating, you can find her doing Pilates, Pinterest crafts, or hanging out with friends.

Social: Instagram, LinkedIn

Discover other New Talent 2024 winners here.