Newhouse Advertising Students Win Five Platinum Awards in Graphis New Talent Advertising Competition

For the first time ever, the Newhouse School’s creative advertising students won every Platinum Advertising Award worldwide in the annual Graphis New Talent Advertising Awards. They also won the most advertising awards overall with 76 total including five Platinums, 15 Golds, 40 Silvers and 16 Honorable Mentions.

All the award-winning campaigns were created in the Creative Advertising Portfolio courses taught by professors of practice Kevin O’Neill and Mel White, and adjunct professor Rich Levy.

“These campaigns really impressed me,” White said. “The students worked on learning the creative process and creating strong visual solutions, and it clearly shows in this award-winning work.”

Art director Victoria Lin ’22 injected humor and whimsy into her Platinum-winning print campaign “Flushed Away” for Waterpik Water Flosser.

a fish getting blasted out of a giant tooth by water
Victoria Lin’s Platinum-winning campaign “Flushed Away” for Waterpik Water Flosser.

“Our students are really good at turning a selling idea into a disruptive, original execution,” O’Neill said.

To showcase Waterpik’s deep cleaning effects, the ads show fountains of water squirting an entire cow, pig and fish from between two massive teeth. Showing strong, unexpected visuals is what makes this campaign so effective. For Lin, the idea began as she wondered why people still get cavities when they regularly brush their teeth.

a pig getting blasted out of a giant tooth by water
Lin injected humor and whimsy into her Platinum-winning campaign “Flushed Away” for Waterpik Water Flosser.

“I like to put myself into the perspective of the audience to see problems and feel what the audience really wants,” she said. “So I tried a water flosser and said ‘wow’ when I saw how much food was being flushed away even after I brushed my teeth.”

a cow getting blasted out of a giant tooth by water
For Lin, the idea for her Platinum-winning campaign began when she wondered why people still get cavities when they regularly brush their teeth.

Her real life also inspired her Platinum-winning “Splashing the Beats” campaign, which showcased JBL’s Waterproof Speakers. “I think most of my inspiration comes from life,” Lin said. “People like to listen to music during leisure and entertainment, which will make them more happy. ​​I thought about the moments in my life when I listened to music, and listening to music while I’m in the bath makes me feel doubly happy.”

To show JBL Waterproof Speakers were “built to be with water,” Lin transformed speakers into vessels built for aquatic adventures like a canoe, bathtub and pool. It took a few rounds of concepting different ideas before she created “Splashing the Beats.”

“Every time I go back to the drawing board, I always present better work,” she said.

Lin not only won two Platinum Awards, but one Gold, four Silvers and three Honorable Mentions, making her the most awarded student in the advertising division worldwide. She  credits her professors for their invaluable guidance.

“From the beginning of the rough idea, to the content and copy of the print ads, to every detail in the picture, it is inseparable from the efforts of Professors White and O’Neill,” she said. “They can always point out the problems in my work and give me a clear direction for improvement.”  

Talia Adler ’22 infused humor into her Platinum-winning “Drive Fun” print campaign for Mini Cooper. “I wanted to create a visual solution that really showed off how fun it is to drive a Mini Cooper,” Adler said. “Car ads tend to have hyper-masculine and intense moods, so I wanted to challenge myself to do something a bit more out-of-the box, and Mini Cooper felt like the perfect brand for it.”

A yellow mini cooper sliding down a slide
Talia Adler’s Platinum-winning campaign “Drive Fun” print campaign for Mini Cooper.

Adler’s campaign shows candy-colored Mini Coopers swinging across monkey bars, teetering on see-saws and zooming down slides with a simple, two-word tagline.

A green mini cooper hanging from the monkey bars
“I wanted to create a visual solution that really showed off how fun it is to drive a Mini Cooper,” Talia Adler said of her Platinum-winning “Drive Fun” print campaign for Mini Cooper.

“Since Mini Coopers are visually such a unique car, I wanted the car to speak for itself,” she said. “So I focused on creating a compelling visual solution with no copy besides the tagline ‘Drive Fun.’”

a blue mini cooper on a see saw
Talia Adler ’22 infused humor into her Platinum-winning “Drive Fun” print campaign for Mini Cooper.

Adler created the idea for “Drive Fun” in Portfolio II, and chose to rework it as an art direction craft assignment for her Portfolio III course to focus on improving the campaign’s design.

Julia Nehrings ’21, copywriter, focused on the environment in “Blind Eye,” a Platinum-winning print campaign for the World Wildlife Foundation. “What inspired this campaign was the raw truth that humans often have the luxury of not paying attention to the uncomfortable,” she said. “We are so used to hearing about bad news that it’s practically static now; we have evolved to tune it out. This campaign’s solution is a new perspective, literally.”

Nehrings achieved this new perspective through extreme close ups of an elephant, tiger and turtle’s eye. Each eye reflects some horror, like a poacher aiming a gun, the bars of a cage and plastic floating in the sea. The copy simply states, “We’ve mastered the art of turning a blind eye. Try looking through a fresh pair.”

a close up of an elephant's eye reflecting back the image of a poacher
Julia Nehrings’ Platinum-winning campaign “Blind Eye,” for World Wildlife Foundation.

“I wanted to find a way to draw attention to my prints and have people notice the message on their own,” Nehrings said. “At first, one just sees an animal, but upon closer inspection one sees a threat. It’s a trick of the eye, and once you see it, you can’t look away.” 

a close up of a tiger's eye reflecting back the image of a cage
The bars of a cage are reflected in the eye of a tiger in Julia Nehrings’ Platinum-winning campaign “Blind Eye,” for World Wildlife Foundation.

At Newhouse, Nehrings not only honed her writing skills but also her ability to think outside the box. She said this is what shaped not only an award-winning campaign but also a bright future in the industry.

“I was pushed to think upside down and backwards, always ask ‘why’ before ‘what,’ and try the opposite before the obvious,” she said. “Being able to combine that with my drive to create positive change is what has paved the way to me having a career I truly love.”

a close up of an turtle's eye reflecting back the image of plastic pollution in the ocean
“I wanted to find a way to draw attention to my prints and have people notice the message on their own,” said Julia Nehrings of her Platinum-winning campaign “Blind Eye,” for World Wildlife Foundation.

Art director Lynn Seah ’22 and copywriter Jeff Robie ’21 won the only Platinum Advertising Award given to a case study video for “Hum-mer” (video). Though Hummer’s new vehicles are all-electric, Seah and Robie had to combat Hummer’s notorious gas-guzzling image and prove the company’s dedication to a greener future in their advertising integrated campaign.

The campaign came together for Seah in an unexpected way. She was reading a book where the main characters drove a Hummer and that same day during her research, she found an article on new technology using sound waves to put out fires. Because the sound waves emit a hum, she connected it to Hummer. Robie was instantly on-board with the challenge.

“There was a video demonstration of a small-scale fire. The person walks up to the flames holding this sonic bass extinguisher like a super-sized Super Soaker. They point it at the flames, and you hear this pulsating vibration noise as the flames get put out,” Robie said. “We blew that up to the highest proportion from that point, saying that we were going to make this technology fight forest fires.”

The team decided to outfit a fleet of electric Hummers with sonic extinguishers embedded in the front grill and a turret extinguisher on the roof as a nod to the brand’s military roots. These “Hum-mers” would fight wildfires using sound, which has less environmental impact than the standard chemical retardants used. The “Hum-mers” cutting edge fire-fighting power would prove the company’s commitment to a more sustainable future.

Their campaign even put out fires on social media. On Spotify, the lyric “fire” in all popular songs was replaced with a humming noise that matched the sound of the sonic extinguishers while the Hummer logo appeared. On Twitter, Hum-mer emojis put out fire emojis in Tweets.

Seah and Robie agreed that explaining the complex technology was challenging, and the assistance from Professor White was incredible.

“At the beginning we were worried our idea was a bit out there, but she encouraged us to do it, and helped us a lot in the crafting of our case study video through multiple revisions and edits,” Seah said.

In addition to winning a platinum for “Hum-mer,” Seah also won one Gold, four Silvers and one Honorable Mention for her campaigns. To her, the awards are a sign of her growth conceptually and visually throughout the creative advertising program.

“I think Newhouse has given me a lot of opportunities and opened many doors for me,” she said. “From the portfolio reviews to the alumni network, being an art director in Newhouse has made me feel like I have access to a lot of helpful resources.”

A complete list of winners can be found below:

Platinum:

Gold:

Silver:

Honorable Mentions:

Katherine Kiessling G’22 is a graduate of the Goldring arts journalism and communications program at the Newhouse School.