RMIT: Advertising students’ pitch-perfect campaigns

Shortlisted for the Cannes Future Lions award, third-year Bachelor of Communication (Advertising) students Gid Goldberg, Noa Shenker, and Sophia Adam were challenged to create a campaign for LEGO using existing technology and imagination to show how creative play is an essential skill set to rebuild the world.

The D&AD New Blood team, also made up of third-year Bachelor of Communication (Advertising) students Alana Wood, Patrick Bucoy, Oscar Turmine Minchinton and Benjamin Caruso, will take home the D&AD Pencil award – considered one of the most prestigious benchmarks for creativity in design and advertising.

Lecturer and Industry Fellow Fiona Finn said the students had emerged from 2020 more determined than ever to succeed.

“After spending all of 2020 working remotely, this group have attacked every task with enthusiasm and creative flair,” Finn said.

“There is a real depth of talent across the entire year group, and it is really exciting to see them winning international awards for creativity.”

Shenker, the LEGO PlayDate team’s copywriter, said he drew on personal experience to come up with the concept.

“I work with primary school aged children with learning disorders and know that mindfulness can be a big challenge for them, but is really encouraged by their schools and parents,” Shenker said.

“We wanted to find a way to incorporate mindfulness in a fun, creative way that excited kids rather than boring them.”

The team completed their campaign in just under eight days, which Shenker said was tough but rewarding.

“The creative process for us was completely compressed, and we worked an insane amount on the project in a really short period of time,” he said.

“It was really gratifying to be rewarded for some of that work, like someone saying, ‘don’t worry, you’re on the right path’.”

Also shortlisted for the Cannes Future Lions award were 2020 RMIT graduates Samuel Bessell, Christopher Newlands and Kristphoer Dervenis.

You can view their campaign ‘The Missing Brick’ here, which was permitted to be entered due to the event being cancelled in their final year.

In announcing the finalists, Creative Director at Clemenger and RMIT Industry Advisory Committee Chair (Advertising), Daniel Pizzato said the standard was “nothing short of exceptional”.

“The quality was brilliant. The case studies presented were an absolute credit to the students and the teaching staff at RMIT,” Pizzato said.

“They were comparable to the standard we judge in award shows around the world by fully-fledged agencies.”

The winning four teams will be announced on 24 June, who will win the chance to pitch their idea to Julia Goldin, Chief Product & Marketing Officer at the LEGO Group.

Grey Poupon, A Little Class in Every Jar

The D&AD Pencil award is considered one of the most prestigious benchmarks for creativity in design and advertising.

Dean of the School of Media and Communication, Professor Lisa French, said the pencil symbolises excellence and those who win are generally regarded at the top of their field.

“As ‘New Blood’ winners, our students were up against a global pool of advertising, design, digital and marketing students, and rising creatives, worldwide,” French said.

“This is a badge of honour and what it means for RMIT advertising students is that they will be in a quality spotlight and this exposure will get them jobs!”

The brief from Grey Poupon was to reintroduce the brand to millennials with a refresh, while still maintaining its luxury status.

Third-year advertising student and team member Alana Wood said she was thrilled to receive the New Blood Pencil.

“I’m still buzzing from it; to have the hundreds of hours of work we put in recognised on a global level is unreal,” Wood said.

“Our idea wasn’t an apple-falling on the head moment. We went through many iterations and almost-ideas over a few months.”

The team were challenged to focus on affluent American millennials audience, using social listening to inform their campaign.

“We jumped on social media to see how they were speaking about and interacting with the brand,” she said.

“We found that this demographic didn’t identify as affluent, so we opted to make sophistication more accessible because everyone deserves to feel a bit classy!”