FOUR TRIPS TO CANNES FOR WINNERS OF THE 2007 CANNES YOUNG CREATIVE COMPETITION

The winners of the Fairfax Young Creative Competition 2007 are Iggy Rodriguez, Junior Copywriter; Tim Cairns, Copywriter; Thorsten Hayer, Interactive Designer and Justin Carew, Junior Art Director of DDB Sydney. They will be representing Australia in the Print and Cyber competitions at the Cannes Lion Festival in June later this year.
The creative brief for this year’s competition was to execute an integrated advertising response for a corporate client in support of ‘EARTH HOUR’. Earth Hour is an initiative that the WWF-Australia and The Sydney Morning Herald invite all Sydney households and businesses to participate in by turning off their lights for one hour at 7.30pm on 31st March 2007.
Entrants needed to use the power of press and cyber to deliver their integrated message that communicates to our audiences that they support the initiative due to their acknowledgement of the issues.
Says Paddy Douneen from Fairfax: “This year is the first time the competition has been run as an integrated brief and we were absolutely delighted by the quality of the entries. We look forward to our Australian young creative team representing Australia in the Print and Cyber competitions at the Cannes Lion Festival in June later this year.”
The print component of the winning entry showed a special edition of The Sydney Morning Herald printed using glow in the dark ink, therefore forcing the judges to turn the lights out to read. While the cyber execution showed the smh.com.au website progressively getting darker during the day of Earth Hour, until eventually being completely black at 7.30pm. At 8.31pm a light switch appeared on screen for the user to click and light up the page again. “This entry displayed everything the judges were looking for in an integrated campaign,” said Zac Skulander, Creative Executive, Fairfax.
On the winning entry, Mark Coad, Managing Director – OMD said: “I feel the winner demonstrated great use of the media territories in a highly relevant and engaging way. It is as much an executional idea as it is a creative one. If I could provide any clues to future entrants – it would be to provide a strong link between the idea and the brief. What are you asking the audience to do or feel as a result? It needs to be more than a good idea. The winner we nominated demonstrated this very well.”
The standard of entries was very high, considering the integrated nature of the brief and they represented a wide range of brands and categories. “It was a close decision that identified the winners” said Paddy.
“The work that truly was integrated stood out,” says Emma Hill, Group Creative Director - Clemenger BBDO, who will represent Australia on the Film Jury at Cannes this year.
The judges will all be at Cannes this year on various juries: Emma Hill, Clemenger BBDO; Mark Coad, OMD; Aaron Turk, Tribal DDB Sydney; Paula Keamy, Rapp Collins Australia; Ralph Van Dijk, Eardrum Australia. (Special guest judge: Michael Spirkovski, Leo Burnett).
Further information can be obtained by contacting the Cannes Lions 2007 representative, Paddy Douneen on 02 9282 3657 or pdouneen@fairfax.com.au.