Category: News

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.

The European Association of Communications Agencies (EACA) and the European Institute for Commercial Communications Education (edcom) are delighted to announce the finalists of the 12th edition of the annual international advertising student competition, Ad Venture.

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.

On 22 April 2020, six juries comprised of academia, advertising professionals and brand owners chose three finalists out of the Top eleven selected campaigns.

This year’s finalists are from two different universities:  Team Beyond and Team Square from École Supérieure de Publicité- France and Team Loss from Hogeschool Utrecht- Netherlands.

Congratulations to the three teams for the good research, innovative strategies and for the creative visual and audio-visual materials.  

ABOUT THE 3 CAMPAIGNS:

*In alphabetical order

Team BEYOND with the campaign name –Nothing is Lost Everything is transformed–  proposed to change the image of Coca-Cola by turning them into pro-active actors for ecology. To achieve this, a collaboration between Coca-Cola and Adidas is being suggested to create an exclusive collection of recycled clothing and shoes. They are going to make the citizens of Prague and Bratislava actors of this action as well by encouraging them to bring plastic bottles back to Adidas stores. The bottles will be collected and turned into a collection of clothes and shoes for the consumer to buy.

Team LOSS named their campaign– Collect to Coonect- they propose a collaboration with NGOs, influencers and Coca-Cola employees, all participants will clean- up the river Vltava from plastic pollution. This action is the starting point for the campaign: This “raw content” created will be used for a documentary about the river. The documentary not only portrays the river and its culture but also the river’s plastic pollution created by people. Coca-Cola’s role in this is being the initiator of the clean-up. The brand acts as a saviour of meaningful Czech places and inspires to a more conscious behaviour.

Team SQUARE named their campaign – The Red Collect– their 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.

For the first time in the Ad Venture history, the third round judging will take place online. A dedicated jury of 7 senior level professionals from academia, client and agency will assess the virtual pitches on 18 May 2020.

The winner team will be awarded with passes to the largest festival in creative marketing, the Cannes Lions Festival.  Because of this year’s special circumstances, the Cannes Lions Festival has been cancelled, the winning team will therefore be rewarded with travel, accommodation and a ticket for next year’s edition of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in June 2021.

We wish the TOP 3 teams best of luck and fun for their virtual pitches!