Creative advertising students win big at One Show Young Ones competition

Newhouse creative advertising students took home seven awards from the 2021 One Show Young Ones competition, a school record. The wins included the school’s first One Show Pencil and ADC Cube Awards.

One Show Young Ones comprises two international competitions: One Show Young Ones Brief, which asks students to create work based on briefs from clients with specific advertising problems to solve, and One Show Young Ones ADC, which includes multiple competition categories and celebrates outstanding concept and craft. ​​ Newhouse students won the second-most awards in the ADC competition and the third-most in the Brief competition out of all U.S. schools. Entrants came from art and portfolio schools, colleges and universities from 23 countries.

“We’re so proud of the talented students who have reached another milestone on their journey to be creative professionals,” says James Tsao, advertising department chair. “Their work looks so effortless, but there are the countless hours of hard work, creativity and determination to make it happen.”

“The One Show Young Ones Brief and ADC competitions are some of the hardest competitions to win in because all of the top creative advertising schools enter them in droves worldwide,” says professor of practice Mel White.

“Creative awards are one of the ways the advertising industry keeps score,” says professor of practice Kevin O’Neill. “Proving you can win them before you’ve even left college helps propel our kids to good jobs in the country’s best creative departments.”

​​Rachel Hayashi ’21, art director, and Jessica Mastorides ’21, copywriter, won one of two Silver Pencils given worldwide in the Burger King Brief competition. The team won for their integrated campaign “Have It The Real Way,” shown in this case study video. The brief asked creatives to “develop an idea that communicates that 100% of Burger King’s menu is now 100% real (free of preservatives, colors and flavors from artificial sources) in a way that lands [its] most important belief: real food tastes better.”

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“We came to this insight that the fast food you see in ads and on TV looks so perfect and amazing, but the food you get when you go does not look that appetizing,” Mastorides says. “We thought if Burger King wants to promote the fact that the ingredients for their entire menu are 100% real, they should show off their 100% real food in their ads without any of the styling or the fake things that they use to make the burgers look so unrealistically perfect.”

Hayashi says the hard work and determination the team put into “Have It The Real Way” helped them win a Silver Pencil.

“Our mindset from the get-go was that we really wanted to win,” Hayashi says. “I think that subconsciously pushed our ideas a lot. We struggled throughout the campaign, it was a lot of blood, sweat and tears. But it was worth it because we did take home a Pencil, and the first one for Newhouse.”

Sarah Sek ’21, art director, and Jessica Miranda ’21, copywriter, were the only winners worldwide in the ADC competition’s Interactive AR/VR category. The creative team won a Silver Cube for their LEGO campaign “Infinicoaster,” shown in this case study video. Their idea merges digital and physical play via virtual reality and a LEGO rollercoaster set.

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“The problem we had to solve was making LEGO prevalent in a world where kids don’t play with toys as often as they used to and there are so many other distractions,” Sek says. “We thought about what LEGO could do to stay relevant. We were thinking about a fun way to combine the physical play of LEGO with the current digital realm. We wanted to make physical play relevant by making it exciting and fun for kids.”

Brian Chau ’22, art director, and Alye Chaisson ’21, copywriter, won a merit award in the Brief competition’s Out of Home category for their Spotify campaign “Drive into Your Daily Drive,” shown in this case study video. The brief asked creatives to promote Spotify’s new “Your Daily Drive” playlist, which had been developed to replace listening to the radio during users’ daily commutes. However, it launched right before the pandemic, when commuting steeply declined, so Spotify needed to promote the product in a different way.

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“We researched where people were driving now that they’re not driving to work,” Chaisson says. “We were thinking about listening in the car while not commuting. That’s where we got the idea of road trips because a lot of people were going on road trips last year.”

During the creative process, Chaisson and Chau went back to the drawing board several times and came back with better ideas, helping them to create their final strong concept. Chau says his time at Newhouse prepared him for entering the advertising world.

“Being good at crunch time is a really good skill because sometimes you don’t have a lot of time to do everything you need to,” Chau says. “Being able to sit down and immediately start contemplating the moment you get a brief helps. That’s a good skill Newhouse teaches the creative students, alongside being good at concepting and making cohesive campaigns.”

In the Brief competition, Sam Luo ’21, art director, and Grace Curran ’21, copywriter, received a shortlist award in the Integrated category for their WhatsApp campaign “On Hold,” shown in this case study video. The brief asked creatives to create an awareness campaign empowering young adults to solve mental health challenges through WhatsApp. Luo and Curran found that Gen Z is the generation most likely to feel anxious, and the incessant buzzing of a phone can contribute to that anxiety. Their idea was “On Hold,” a “do not disturb” feature for WhatsApp that can detect anxiety in the user using facial and voice recognition and pause all notifications when they take a social media break.

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“Our goal was to recognize and solve a problem among those who suffer from mental health issues and create a plausible solution,” Luo says. “We recognized how social media can be triggering to people when experiencing symptoms of depression or anxiety.” 

Luo says working with Curran was amazing, noting her ability to write scripts that matched his big ideas.

“We work really well together and she understands my ways of approaching things,” he says. “We complement each other in a great way. I’m a visual person and jump around all the time. Grace is a very logical person, hence why she is such a brilliant copywriter, and she complemented my craziness.”

In addition to the Silver Cube, Newhouse students won three merit awards in the ADC competition. Luo won for his “McDelivery” print ad campaign in the Advertising/Press category. Cerinn Park ’20, art director, and Marta Lala ’20, copywriter, won one of six awards in the Design for Good/Product Design category for their P&G campaign “uTINTsil,” shown in this case study video. Kelsi Ryan ’20, art director, and Chloe Greenwald ’20, copywriter, won one of four awards in the Advertising/Innovation category for their Apple and GLAAD campaign “Deadnaming,” shown in this case study video.

​​“I’m very proud of our creative advertising student winners,” White says. “Winning these awards means that the ad industry has communicated that this student work is stellar.”

White makes the Young Ones briefs an integral part of the Portfolio III course, where the students work on these briefs in art director/copywriter creative teams. The Briefs competition winning campaigns were created in this course. The ADC competition winning entries were also created in White’s Portfolio III course, as well as in the Portfolio II course taught by O’Neill.

“These Young Ones briefs are difficult to solve and reflect the types of briefs in the industry,” White says. “When the students create original innovative solutions for such hard briefs, they are ready for the industry.”