Success never tasted so good.

A group of SMU students are the winners of Chipotle Mexican Grill’s “30-Seconds of Fame” student advertising contest.

The team created three, 30-second commercials for the restaurant, one of which was selected as the winner from nearly 70 submissions from more than 20 universities.

Advertising students Alexandra Edwards, Kyle McCook, Jason Shipp, Sirichai Sirisawat and Peri Wilson, and cinema-television students Jordan Mathis, Nick McCarthy, and Sarah Nolen were members of the winning team, one of two teams from SMU that competed in the event.

“Both teams did work that was the best that was submitted,” said Dr. Glenn Griffin, assistant professor at the Temerlin Advertising Institute.

The project was done outside of class for fun, Griffin said.

“They did it out of shear joy of what they were doing,” he said.

For their efforts, the team won $20,000. Half will be split among the team members and the other will be split between the advertising and cinema-television divisions.

“I’m using my money to buy a new Mac,” said McCarthy.

The project was a collaboration between the two divisions of the Meadows School of the Arts.

“Our new dean is very supportive of collaboration, and this was in response to that,” Griffin said.

The advertising students were responsible for developing the ideas for the commercials, while the CTV students were responsible for making it work.

“We decided to go with something that had a simplistic feel,” Edwards said. “Chipotle’s brand is bold, and we wanted to keep that image.”

At the same time, Edwards said the team wanted to try something different to expand the company’s brand.

Chipotle’s ads have focused on the size of their burritos, Edwards said. “We wanted to stay away from the size message and focus on the fresh ingredients. Not to take away from it, but add another dimension.”

“‘The Wall’ won everyone over here,” said Jim Adams, Chipotle’s director of marketing in a statement. “It was clever.

It used our food without hitting you over the head with it. It was hip, and targeted the demographic of the people who produced it. It was simply outstanding in virtually every way.”

The team said the logistics of putting the commercials together in less than a month was the biggest challenge. The biggest problem, they said, was finding locations.

For one commercial that took place in a Laundromat, they used one in the Village Apartments.

Another commercial was shot in the Hughes-Trigg Market. One commercial was shot in the kitchen of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity house.

The winning commercial was shot at two students’ apartments at the Phoenix Apartment complex on Mockingbird.

While producing commercials is only a small part of what advertising and CTV students do with their degrees, it is a very important skill to have because it’s one of the easiest ways graduates can find jobs, the team said.

All the commercial submissions can be seen on www.youtube.com. In addition to the contest the SMU students have already won, there is another.

The teams’ commercial that gets the most views on the Web site will receive an additional $10,000 for themselves and their school.

Officials from Chipotle will be on campus Nov. 29 to present the winning team with the check for the prize.