Tim Gruber | The Roanoke Times

Jim Dudley, owner of an ad agency in Roanoke, designed a Christmas card last year that featured mug shots of his nieces and nephew. The card won a gold Addy from the American Advertising Federation. His office shelves are lined with his crystal trophies.

Christmas is still about five months away, but Santa's elves may already be tallying up scorecards on who's been naughty or nice.

Just ask the Aldridge family. Last year, the Roanoke family received a very official-looking envelope with a North Pole return address.

"I just thought it was hilarious," Kathy Aldridge said about the package labeled "The Santa Report." It featured her three children, each with a mug shot and a short write-up gauging whether their behavior deserves a candy cane or coal.

Turns out Santa was really Aldridge's brother, Jim Dudley, a Roanoke ad agency owner, who was looking for a creative twist on the typical store-bought Christmas card for his sister to send out to friends.

But the design, a four-page packet stamped with an official elf-watch insignia, ended up winning a national advertising award last month in a contest that drew nearly 58,000 participants from across the country and was sponsored by the American Advertising Federation.

Dudley, who has done work for the O. Winston Link Museum and Lewis-Gale Medical Center, said he created the card for a lark, hoping to get a laugh or two from the family, but later decided to enter it in AAF's local contest, where it won a general excellence award and a gold for the Western Virginia division.

The design then went on to win top honors for the mid-Atlantic region, competing against larger ad firms in Charlotte, N.C, and Raleigh, N.C., and finally to the national level, where it again won the contest's highest award, a gold Addy, the Oscar-equivalent for the advertising industry. His design was called "Santa Report: Aldridge Family." The award ceremony took place last month in Louisville, Ky.

"I was somewhat surprised to be rated that high," said Dudley, 32, who founded his ad firm, Dudley Creative, in 2002. He noted, however, that the honor was a win for local advertising professionals as a whole and a boost for the city's profile as a source of creative energy.

"It shows local businesses don't have to go out of town to get national-level work," Dudley said.

The three Aldridge children, ages 2, 4 and 7, are featured in the design, their sinister expressions and mug shots labeled with nicknames such as "Toots" and "Two Fingers." One report shows Abigail "The Queen" Aldridge wearing pigtails and a furrowed brow. Comments for Amelia "Two Fingers" Aldridge characterize her having an "impressive range of grunts but few words." Her "current lovable disposition," the report suggests, "may be the calm before the storm."

The family sent about 75 copies of the package to friends and family but received reactions from people well beyond their immediate circle.

"I had people coming up to me in church that we didn't even know," Kathy Aldridge said. "He really captured their quirks so well on paper."

At the same time, Dudley, a Roanoke native who has worked at such advertising firms as the former John Lambert Associates, is no stranger to the Addy award.

In his Northeast Roanoke home, a sizable collection of crystal trophies line his office shelves, with still more kept in boxes because "they don't fit."

In designing the Christmas card, Dudley said he was looking for a way to capture the zaniness of his sister's children -- an aspect of the design that would be difficult to mass produce. "They couldn't be stock and funny," he said.

Next year, however, may be a challenge for Dudley, who admits he has set the bar rather high: "It's almost like we created a monster in terms of expectations."