The ideas have been dreamed up, the work has been displayed, the sucking up to creative leaders has been done, the leftover nibbles have presumably been wrapped up in napkins and taken home, and another bunch of advertising students have learned a few tricks to help them into gainful employment. Here are some of the highlights from AUT and Media Design School.
As Whitney so rightly sang, the children are our future. And the ad children from two of the bigger schools are getting set show off the year’s work in the hope of securing gainful employment, with AUT holding a function tonight and Media Design School holding its portfolio event next Tuesday (and using the ‘reaction faces’ of local creative juggernauts to help promote it).
Last week, StopPress met with an estimable judging panel in an effort to determine which finalist in the StopPress/MediaWorks TVC of the Year competition was most deserving of this year’s title. Copious head scratching, contemplative groans and a fair bit of imbibing ensued as the judges weighed up the pros and cons of the campaigns over a lunch at Auckland’s Neighbourhood brew bar. And by the end of this highly scientific estimation of the effectiveness of the each campaign, the judges came to a final shortlist of three candidates: ‘Mistakes’ for the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) by Clemenger BBDO, ‘Devil’s Chair’ for NZI by FCB and ‘The People’s Film’ for VW by Colenso BBDO. PLUS: ‘Blazed As’ for the NZTA by Clemenger BBDO and ‘Born to Defy’ for Steinlager by DDB took out the top spots in the craft category.
Another successful year of moulding, shaping and nurturing young minds and preparing them for a life of advertising, with 100 percent of the students now in jobs. Media Design School’s Kate Humphries shares her thoughts.
A collection of bureaucrats, educators and ad folk gathered together in an old building on the corner of Halsey and Packenham Streets in the Wynyard Quarter this afternoon to eat chicken sandwiches and hear about a new partnership between the Media Design School and Saatchi & Saatchi that will see the creation of a new Graduate School focused on digital innovation—and hopefully add some fuel to the ICT fire in Auckland’s innovation precinct.
After another year of nurturing, moulding and shaping spongey young brains at Media Design School, course leader Kate Humphries looks back on 2012.
Saatchi & Saatchi snaffles a digi-boffin, a word from our X Factor sponsors, the Media Design School kids are alright, Adshel brings in a chief organiser, DB stalwart steps down, Gopher adds one to the burrow and Murray Lindsay swaps stations.
Marsden Inch have chucked a generous sum behind the bar so there are drinks, there are nibbles, there are students, and there are portfolios. All that’s required to complete the equation are lots of creatives to wander along between 5.30 and 8pm tonight to The Nathan Club on the ground floor of the Nathan Building at 51 Galway Street, Britomart. There’s also been a suggestion to bring along a few more of the shit idea bins to the show. So to encourage everyone to be at their biting and incisive best, MDS will have a special limited run of 20 shit idea bins on offer.
They’re another year older and (definitely) deeper in debt; they’ve been awarded in international student competitions; they’ve won both the NAB and TVNZ national student challenges; they’ve been through the rigours of a retail round robin with several agencies; they recently submitted six weeks of brand new work on various briefs to an industry panel for some tough words and sage advice; and now the Media Design School advertising students are ready to show their wares next Wednesday between 5.30 and 8pm at The Nathan Club, 51 Galway street, Britomart.
Two winning campaigns from the same agency fold this month, with Ogilvy Wellington’s Nigel Richardson & Steve Cooper scaring the bejesus out of the judges—James Mok and Regan Grafton from DraftFCB, Phil Yule from Voicebox and Kate Humphries from Media Design School—with their Consumer NZ campaign ‘Appliance Nightmares’ and Adam Barnes & James O’Sullivan taking the merit for their KFC ‘Facebook/Double Down’ campaign, which was written at Ogilvy just before they popped over to join DDB.
Spark PHD welcomes back an old friend, CAANZ announces its international Effie judge, Healthy Life Media’s allergic reaction, Adshool students have something to crow about, The PR Shop goes corporate, TEDx announces its speaker line-up and Adobe appoints a new communicator.
Special Group duo Kim Fraser and Sarah Frizzell took the combined Dec/Jan ORCA with their ’91 Days of Summer’ campaign for Streets Ice Cream. They made 91 different ads, turning each day of summer into a national day. “December 4. National Weta Freak Out Day. Nothing says summer like a weta under that thing you just picked up. Is it a giant insect or a tiny brown crayfish? Doesn’t matter, your boyfriend still needs to man up, and grab a glass and a piece of cardboard.”
After another year of nurturing, moulding and shaping young creative minds and preparing them for a life spent pushing commercial messages/sipping champagne on superyachts, The AdSchool’s course leader Kate Humphries delivers her verdict on 2011’s work.
Creative students at Media Design School’s AdSchool have triumphed at the 2011 Bees Awards winning the award for Best Student Brief, the only Kiwi win in this year’s awards. The international awards honour the best in social media marketing practices. Ben Andrews (art director) and Craig Douglas (copywriter), won the award for their campaign ‘Dreaming in a foreign language’, created to a special brief for client Mango Languages. The campaign shows innovative use of Facebook to market language learning software.
As a founding member and the first course leader of the AdSchool at Media Design School, David Bell has whipped a multitude of young advertising minds into shape and readied them for the cut and thrust of the real ad world. And to honour these efforts over the years, he was handed the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2011 CAANZ Axis Awards last week.
Creativity can come from anywhere. And the Media Design School obviously recognises that, because it’s calling for wildcard entries to fill two positions on this year’s creative advertising course.
More proof, if any were needed, that New Zealand is still hitting it out of the park when it comes to creativity in advertising after the Adschool at Auckland’s Media Design School was named the fourth best (a very good position, as DDB’s Moro campaign shows) advertising school of the decade on account of the gongs its students have taken home in the first ten years of the YoungGuns Awards.