Author: edcom Team

Edcom and the European Association of Communications Agencies are excited to announce the finalists of the 13th annual international student advertising competition, Ad Venture.

This year, the student teams were tasked with creating a communications campaign to launch a mid-strength Peroni beer in three European markets (the UK, Romania and the Netherlands), make it exciting and relevant for consumers, and build the credentials of the Peroni brand.

Our expert jury of 16 academics and 16 industry representatives have spoken. Out of 62 teams, 10 were selected to the second round of judging. The finalists will have just over two weeks to create a video presentation of their campaign and prepare to answer the tough questions of our jury during an online session on 4 May. The winners will be announced on 5 May.

Congratulations to the finalists for your great work!

Full list of finalists in alphabetical order:

Eurêka (Paris University 2 Panthéon-Assas)

Kuckoo (Bournemouth University)

Lila Ventra (Artesis Plantijn University College Antwerp)

Oracle (Paris University 2 Panthéon-Assas)

PINK (University of Bucharest)

Sara Perche Ti Amo (Paris University 2 Panthéon-Assas)

Solar (ESP Lyon)

Sparkior (Bournemouth University)

Storize (ESP Paris)

Whoosh Agency (Sup de Pub, Paris)

The winners of the 2020/2021 Graduation Competition have been chosen!

Following 2 rounds of rigorous judging, the jurors have decided that the following two papers stood out the most:

• In the Bachelor category, Aisling Hoban, a student from Technological University Dublin won with her thesis ‘A Study of Millennials’ Susceptibility to Nostalgia During Times of Uncertainty: A Focus on Nostalgic Consumption During Covid-19.’
• In the Master’s category Luísa Perdigão from IADE won with her work ‘The influence of the humoristic tone on the effectiveness of environmental narratives.’

The Competition rewards the best Bachelor and Master theses on advertising or commercial communications among edcom member schools with a €400 cash prize.

Aisling Hoban, the BA winner, said:

“Upon graduating during a pandemic with a first class honours degree, I was over the moon to hear that my thesis was also awarded a first class honours grade. As Covid-19 spread across the world, I capitalised on this as an opportunity to explore Millennials’ susceptibility to nostalgia during such unprecedented times. The contextual opportunity fell on my lap and I was really excited to be able to conduct some ‘original’ research on something that has never been done before! I wanted to get my research out there so I entered the EACA graduation competition. I was so thrilled to hear I got through to the next round, let alone hearing that I won the competition! I am so proud of what I have achieved. It feels truly gratifying that my work has been recognised on a European level. Working on my thesis from home was made all the more manageable with my amazing friends and family by my side. I’d like to express my gratitude for the amazing support I received from my supervisor Valerie Gannon and my year head Roger Sherlock at TU Dublin – a technological university adept at sculpting world-renowned academics.”

Besides the winning paper, the jurors awarded the second & third place. Carla Dejonghe, from the HOWEST University of Applied Sciences with her thesis on How do the images of sustainable food on Instagram and in three Belgian press titles, influence the communication of food companies? won the second place. Lena Schallhammer from FH Wien scooped a third place with her paper on The Corporate Visual Identity of the restaurant industry.

Luísa Perdigão, MA winner 2021, commented:

“I didn’t know about the edcom Graduation Competition until I was told that my thesis had been picked to take part in the contest, which took me by surprise. This competition is truly an excellent initiative that offers students the opportunity to exhibit their work on a large scale. Personally I saw it as a great way to develop my ability to synthesize and reflect on the work I had previously done. It was certainly an extremely rewarding experience, which I was only able to have in large part thanks to the support and cooperation of my supervisor Isabel Farinha.”

In the master category, the jurors also awarded the second & third place. Kerry Mahony, from the TU Dublin with her thesis entitled Glamour, Gloss, and the Girl Boss: A Discourse Analytical Study of Postfeminist Narratives as seen in Beauty Blog ‘Into The Gloss’ won the second place. Karsten Beeker from Breda University of Applied Science scooped a third place with his paper on Watching the Game: The Impact of Virtual Reality on Viewing Experiences in Esports.

Here you can access the winning papers’ summaries and posters. For more information, please visit the competition’s website.

The Winner of the Ad Venture Student Competitions 2019-20 has been selected!

This year’s first virtual edition of the Ad Venture Student competition was a great success despite the challenging times!

 We are delighted to announce the 2020 Ad Venture winner: Team SQUARE. From Ecole Superieur de Publicité Lyon- France! The team has convinced the third round jury with their campaign entitled “The Red Collect”. With this campaign, the team’s idea is about setting up special collection bins for plastic bottles in the city centre of Bratislava. The material collected will then be transformed into a bike path. Ideally, this solution should be replicated in other cities in Slovakia and then in other European countries with low recycling rates. All this combined with a great live presentation, had the jury impressed.

The winning team, represented by Sarah O’ Hayon, Pierre Cauchois, Corentin Hernandez, Elodie Muguet and and Ouijdane Chahdi competed against 58 other teams from 12 countries across Europe answering a brief developed in collaboration with the client, Coca Cola Czech Republic & Slovakia.

Coca Cola offers more than 500 brands and 4,300 products worldwide. While many brands have come and gone during the past 133 years, Coca Cola’s success is based in part on their history of investing in the success and sustainability of the communities they call home, from their hometown of Atlanta to more than 200 countries and territories where you can find their product today.

For this years’ edition, students in the field of commercial communications were challenged to create a communications campaign to increase the corporate reputation of Coca-Cola Czech Republic and Slovakia on the topic of zero waste. Their task was to find innovative solutions to create local behaviour change with the goal to bring about positive environmental impact and position Coca-Cola as a pro-active leader of the waste problem solution.

The three finalists – Team  BEYOND ( Ecole Superieur de Publicité Lyon- France), Team LÖSS (Hogeschool Utrecht) and Team SQUARE.(Ecole Superieur de Publicité Lyon-France)– were selected during two initial judging rounds and were given complete creative freedom to present their campaign to the final jury and the Edcom members online via Zoom.

The final jury, chaired by Richard Robinson (Managing Director of Xeim Advise, Econsultancy), is composed of Robin de Wouters (Communication Coordinator at European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance), Jan Binar (CEO McCann Prague), Mathilde Gollety (Professor of Management and Marketing- University of Paris 2 Pantheon Assas), Jo de Bruyn (Digital Marketing Professor and Coach- University of Gent) and client representatives Martin Binder (Business and Commercial Strategy Manager CZ/SK at The Coca-Cola Company) and Petra Sabova (Marketing Manager CZ/SK at The Coca-Cola Company).

The students from the winning team, will be rewarded for their hard work with travel, accommodation and tickets to the prestigious Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity which will take place in June 2021.

Registrations for the next Ad Venture Student Competition will open in autumn 2020.

Organised by European Institute for Commercial Communications Education (edcom) and The European Association of Communications Agencies (EACA), Ad Venture is the first Pan-European competition which gives students the opportunity to experience what it is like to work in advertising by creating their own campaign in response to a brief from a real client.

For further information, please contact inspire@eaca.eu or visit the webpage of the competition.