UNC to debut new TV ad during first football game

UNC has scrapped its “Minds on a Mission” TV promo and will unveil a new commercial during the telecast of the opening football game Saturday.

The University hinted on Twitter Thursday that the new ad would pay homage to an older commercial narrated by the late CBS correspondent Charles Kuralt, a UNC alumnus.

“What is it that binds us to this place as to no other?” the tweet read, quoting the old TV spot. “New #UNC video promo: something old, something new. Stay tuned Saturday night!”

Rick White,

associate vice chancellor for communications and public affairs, said the commercial was produced in-house and would mix themes.

“I think you may find it as a nice blend of the old but also a lot of the new, and you’ll maybe hear some new voices there that are a little bit different,” he said.

White said UNC began developing the new promo several months ago and would likely follow it with others this year.

“This, I think, will probably be the first of some things which will be seen, not necessarily right away, but going on in the future,” he said.

Provost Jim Dean told The Daily Tar Heel in February the 30-second stop-motion “Minds on a Mission” campaign would end. Dean responded to a student’s tweet requesting to scrap the commercial with the hashtag “#workingonit.”

“Apparently a lot of people have nostalgia for the old one with Charlie Kuralt,” said Joel Curran, the vice chancellor for communications.

Kuralt, a former editor of The Daily Tar Heel, was a student at UNC from 1951-54, has a replica of his old office in Carroll Hall and was buried in Old Chapel Hill Cemetery. He was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1996 and wrote the book “North Carolina Is My Home,” published in 1998.

The commercial he narrated was replaced by the animated stop-motion spot in 2010.

Junior Daleah Wilkerson of Raleigh said she didn’t mind the “Minds on a Mission” commercial, which depicted UNC students’ hands fixing world problems on a globe.

“I thought it was a good example of the University and the initiatives we take,” she said. “I also liked it because it showed a global aspect of the University.”

Vineet Gopinathan, an environmental health sciences major, said he didn’t feel strongly about the commercial.

“The old one wasn’t particularly bad,” he said, “but it wasn’t particularly good. It was cheesy, but it’s going to be cheesy — there’s nothing they can do about that.”

UNC’s football game against Liberty University will begin at 6 p.m. Saturday and air on the ESPN 3 online network.

university@dailytarheel.com