BA (Hons) Creative Advertising graduate Emma Bromley has been announced as the winner of the UK Young Lions Competition 2020 in the print category.
The UK Young Lions Competition is an annual award that aims to showcase the best young creatives working in the UK aged under 30.
This year 175 UK applicants entered the print category and were given a brief centred around diversity and inclusion to create a stand-out, captivating and unique print ad. Judges were looking for an idea that would leap out and capture an audience.
Emma graduated from BA (Hons) Creative Advertising at Leeds Arts University in 2017 and is now a copywriter at ZEAL Creative Limited. Emma won the award jointly with her colleague Samantha Banner. Their winning entry, entitled The Truth Behind the Ads, explores diversity within the advertising industry. Here Emma outlines their response to the brief:
‘People from diverse backgrounds recognise that they’re underrepresented in advertising, but most don’t realise why. The truth is that it’s because they’re underrepresented in the advertising workforce. We’re using our insider knowledge of the creative industries to expose the truth — the people who are often behind ads that address diverse audiences are not diverse themselves, leading to inauthentic advertising that the audience cannot relate to. This stemmed from a truth that came from us, two white, able, millennials, tackling a brief about diversity. It felt almost hypocritical that the answer was coming from us. Therefore, in our print ad we’ve chosen to ‘out’ ourselves as an industry, by putting our hands up and admitting that without diversity within the workforce, we’ve no hope of seeing it in the work we create.
We want anyone who feels underrepresented to look at our campaign and get one message from it; we’re aware, we want things to change but we can’t do it without you.’
Emma will go on to compete alongside creatives from around the world in the prestigious Global Young Lions Competition at The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2021.