In a testament to the quality of the Newhouse creative advertising courses, the number of awards won by students at advertising competitions has increased by 243 percent over last year.
Students developed their competition pieces in portfolio courses taught by professors Mel White and Kevin O’Neill, and the resulting wins came at top national and international award shows and competitions.
“Succeeding in the advertising business is about continually separating yourself from the common practitioner,” says O’Neill. “Winning boatloads of these awards is where Newhouse students begin doing that.”
Six Newhouse seniors won awards in two of the three most prestigious student competitions—Cannes Future Lions and One Show Young Ones.
The Cannes Future Lions brief tasked students with connecting an audience to a product or service from a global brand via a technology that wasn’t available three years ago. Emily Alek and Jingpo Li took home a Future Lion for their recycling app idea, TrashScan. Only five Future Lions are awarded worldwide each year.
The One Show Young Ones brief challenge was to create an innovative campaign to increase awareness of opioid addiction while decreasing the associated stigma. Students Chi-Ching Lam and Danika Peterson won for The Social Dosage, and students Huixin Xian and Joshua Race won for Reverse Pac-Man.
The winning projects in these two competitions were created in the Portfolio III course, which is designed to give students the opportunity to create work that meets award criteria while learning how to use creativity to solve specific advertising problems. The students are given time to focus on competition briefs, which mimic the work they will do at top ad agencies.
Advertising chair James Tsao sees these wins as an exciting milestone for the creative emphasis in the advertising program.
“We are proud of the remarkable achievements made by students and faculty within only a few years,” Tsao says. “Now our students are recognized as creative, elite and young talents by leading ad agencies. We look forward to having more successful stories in the years to come.”
Advertising competition awards help catapult creative careers in the industry. Scott Goodson, the founder of Strawberry Frog, wrote in a piece for the Huffington Post: “Individuals who create award-winning work get better raises, promotions and job options.” Awards are of strategic importance for students who wish to stand out before industry professionals who will be evaluating them for internships and jobs.
According to White: “Our students’ award-winning work impressed creative directors and creative recruiters at the 2018 New York City Newhouse Portfolio Review, which resulted in top advertising agency creative internships for our students. The reason is simple—winning awards in these top creative advertising competitions means that the ad industry has validated students’ work. This communicates to ad agencies who are hiring these students that they may be able to create the kind of work that wins awards for the ad agencies at those very same advertising competitions.”
Creative advertising awards won by Newhouse students in the 2017-2018 school year:
