BA (Hons) Creative Advertising student agency, Team Tortoise, have been announced as winners of the Ad Venture Student Competition 2017.
The competition is organised by the European Institute for Commercial Communications Education (edcom) and EACA, and gives students the opportunity to work on a creative advertising campaign, sending their submissions to a panel made up of the client representatives and other industry experts.
Team Tortoise’s campaign, What Are You Laughing At?, was announced the winner after being presented to the final jury, chaired by Ricardo Monteiro (HAVAS Worldwide), during the edcom May meeting in Lisbon, Portugal.
What Are You Laughing At? 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 the team, are “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.
Competition winners, Team Tortoise said:
“As this was the first time we have worked together on a brief, each stage of the competition was very personal to us. The idea for our campaign stemmed from an article on the inequalities women encounter every day, something that both Caitlin and I have unfortunately experienced first-hand. Our campaign's aim was to address these seemingly small inequalities that are often tolerated and overlooked by society and each one of us contributed to form this impactful message.
When we were announced as the winners it was such a great feeling! We are extremely proud as the standard of the competition was so high. We are now looking forward to our upcoming trip to Cannes Lions festival, where we hope to establish connections with the many industry professionals who will be attending”
The winning team of students 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. Another Leeds College of Art agency, EUros, were also shortlisted in the top ten.
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!”
The students have been rewarded for their hardwork and creativity with travel, accommodation and tickets to the prestigious Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity which will take place in June 2017.
You can view Team Tortoise’s winning campaign HERE.
Find out more about edcom's Ad Venture student competition.
