… Team Tortoise!
Lisbon, 19 May 2017: Team Tortoise, from Leeds College of Art (UK) is the winner of the Ad Venture Student Competition 2017, organised by the European Institute for Commercial Communications Education (edcom) and EACA. The jury of the third round announced today that the campaign “What are you laughing at?” was the most effective and attractive campaign.
The winners commented: “When we were announced as the winners it was a great feeling, and we felt extremely proud of what we had produced as the standard of the competition is so high. The opportunity to go to Cannes Lions festival is a fantastic prize for our hard work, and we can’t thank all the organisers and jury members enough for this opportunity. The two days that we spent with the edcom members during our time in Lisbon was also enjoyable as everyone was so welcoming. It was a pleasure to be a part of the edcom community for the short period, and we feel as if we made some connections that will last for years to come. The Ad Venture competition has been a great experience all round. To start with the brief was exciting and challenging, and provided us with an interesting campaign for our portfolios. Secondly, the opportunity to go to Lisbon and present our idea in front of academics, industry professionals and the client themselves is an invaluable experience, and something that most other competitions don’t offer.”
The “What Are You Laughing At?” campaign by Team Tortoise focuses on denouncing micro-sexism. The objective of the campaign is to highlight the ever-present inequalities that women have to deal with on a day-to-day basis, which can often seem ‘small’ in comparison to other larger scale wrong doings to women in our society, but which, according to this team, are at “the root of more serious inequalities”. The juxtaposition between the initial light-heartedness of the campaign with the grounding reality of the actual message forces the audience to rethink their stance on gender equality.
The winning team, represented by Caitlin Horrex, Emma Bromley, Jasper McIver and Zebedee Devey Waterhouse competed against 60 other teams from 14 countries answering a brief developed in collaboration with the client European Women’s Lobby, which campaigns for women’s rights and gender equality in Europe.
The three finalists – Team Tortoise (Leeds College of Art, UK), Team Brilas (Bournemouth University, UK) and Team Baguette (Pantheon University, France) – were selected during two initial judging rounds and were given the opportunity to present their campaign to the final jury and the edcom members during the edcom May meeting at the IADE University in Lisbon, Portugal.
The Leeds College of Art students were 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 2017.
The final jury, chaired by Ricardo Monteiro (HAVAS Worldwide), is composed of Sofia Barros (APAP), Susana Carvalho (JWT), Alexandre Duarte (IADE University), Luc Van Dijk (Hogeschool Utrecht) and the client’s members Ana-Sofia Fernandez (Portuguese Platform for women’s rights) and Nora Kiss (Portuguese Network of Young People for Gender Equality).
Ad Venture Jury Chair Ricardo Monteiro commented: “Working in advertising can be tough, but if you do it with a lot of passion, it’s a wonderful business full of beautiful people that can be extremely rewarding. Today, all teams have demonstrated a great combination of dedication, ambition, talent and passion for our industry; they should all be very proud of themselves.”
The Jury Chair further added: “Team Tortoise won with a very brilliant campaign: they used universal elements that everybody understands and that exist in every language. Taking the risk of seeming banal, this campaign appropriates the simplicity of language and that of an emoji, becoming something very easy to empathise with.”
The European Women’s Lobby commented: “EWL wishes to congratulate the team Tortoise for their work. Their proposal is full of creativity and professionalism. They tackle the most subtle and persistent obstacle to equality between women and men, namely everyday sexism, and propose a concrete and through-provoking way to react and engage. We wish them the best for their feminist future!”
Registrations for the next Ad Venture Student Competition will open in autumn 2017.
For further information, please contact inspire@eaca.eu