AdSchool scored 23 finalists at Ad Stars

AUCKLAND, Monday: Media Design School’s advertising students scored 23 of the 151 shortlisted places at shortlist stage of Ad Stars in Busan, South Korea. The total number of global entries in the nonprofessional category was 2920.

MDS programme director Kate Humphries said: “The NZ students broke their previous record, and they’ve scored across a wide range of categories, including scoring three out of only four ideas shortlisted worldwide in the Diverse Insights category.

“So, let’s start off with raucous applause for a great achievement in that rarity of a category for Bella Rakate & Sam Taunton Clark for NFTakeback (also shortlisted in the Direct category); Zak Hawkins & Logan Ware for Covid Currency (also shortlisted in PR), and Zak Hawkins & Émilie Wright for Spotify’s Too Diverse for Radio (also shortlisted in Outdoor).

“Every subject area we’ve taught has been acknowledged by international industry judges.”

“Following that up we have standing ovations for Maria Masniak & Callum Bately for WikiBlocks (Wikipedia), shortlisted in both the Creative E-commerce and Media categories; Bayleigh Way & James Greig for The BiOlympic Tattoo, shortlisted in both PR and Social & Influencer categories; Jack Close & Alex Erkkila for Spotify Saplings, shortlisted in the Innovation & Green categories; Jonno Entwistle & Catalina Nunez Elevancini for Reverse Turnitin, shortlisted in Mobile and Design; Leon Bristow & James McCulloch for Gum Defense (Wrigleys), shortlisted in Design and Brand Experience & Activation categories; Alyssa Yeoman & Sam Issacs for Babytoos (Johnson & Johnson), shortlisted in the Social & Influencer category; Marcelo Dario for Luggage (whirli.com), shortlisted in Print; Maria Masniak & Jonno Entwistle for Your Own Radio Station (Spotify) shortlisted in Design; Maria Masniak & Catalina Nunez Elevancini for You Run The Show (Netflix), shortlisted in Design; Jack Pfiszter & Jonno Entwistle for This is an NFT (OpenSea), shortlisted in Design; Alyssa Yeoman & Courtney Andersen for Burger King Redundancies also shortlisted in Design; and Bella Rakate, Marisa Watson, & James Greig for Car Brain (Spotify) shortlisted in Brand Experience & Activation.

“It’s a great haul across a number of categories, which means every subject area we’ve taught in the first half of the year has been acknowledged by international  industry judges.

Thank you!
“But we couldn’t have done that without input from industry-so, a huge thanks to our two industry guests who came in to critique specific projects: Michael Tam (global design director at IBM iX Hong Kong) and Tamryn Kerr (creative director VLMY&R London).

“And high fives all around to our local industry panellists Dave Shirley (FCB), Adam Thompson (Augusto), Jacob Newton &  Josep Jover (DDB), as well as Justin Butler, Letizia Bozzolini and Tom Johnson (Special) who all came in to critique a massive 44 ideas for our first industry panel of the year.”

• www.mediadesignschool.com
• Ad Stars professional category