Young Lions Aotearoa 2023 winners announced

AUCKLAND, Last night: The Comms Council and Stuff announced the winners of the Young Lions Aotearoa 2023 competition at Shed10, on the back of this year’s Axis Speaks event in front of 600+ creatives from across the industry.

The competition, which ran from March-12, challenged young creatives with briefs centred around one of UnLtd’s charities, Springboard, which is based in the Rodney District and focuses on helping young people at risk.

They do this through a number of wrap-around services and have become an integral part of the community that they operate within.

Print participants were challenged to come up with an A3 DPS to recruit 1000 donors each committed to investing $ 10 per month, while media participants were asked to craft an innovative creative media approach to get people to visit Sheepworld, a Springboard-owned enterprise, which in turn support young people at risk.

Both teams were given 72 hours to respond to the brief, and media teams were also then shortlisted, those shortlisted were required to give a 10-minute presentation on their response including answering questions from the panel of judges.

“It’s been great to be able to revive the Young Lions competition in Aotearoa. It’s the best competition for emerging talent in the world.”

Comms Council ceo Simon Lendrum said: “It’s been great to be able to revive the Young Lions competition in Aotearoa. It’s the best competition for emerging talent in the world, and we’re very proud to have been able to bring it back.

The quality of all entrants was humbling and inspiring in equal measure.”

Loren Smith and Amber Garrett of MBM won the media category by proposing media partnerships at launch to drive awareness at scale. Their response utilised a kid’s version of the Allbirds sneaker as a media channel for both Springboard and Sheepworld, connecting through parents, school leaders and PTA’s. This approach would result in awareness reaching 500K parents in New Zealand, ongoing sales and revenue for Springboard & Sheepworld, and over 500 Sheepworld visits during the July school holidays.

Jesse Knight and Tara Ryan from MBM won in the Media category. Jeanie Patterson and Frances Nadan from Essence Mediacom for winning the bronze in the Media category.

Lauren Brokenshire and Matthew Aitken of FCB Aotearoa won the Print category, with Hayley Tubb and Phaedra Starling from DDB Aotearoa for their amazing work and for winning silver.

Camille Gagnon and Hugo Smith from Colenso BBDO won Bronze in the Print category.

The winning creative work will be showcased on the Comms Council website in the coming days.

The winning teams will now represent Aotearoa at the Young Lions Global Competition in Cannes this June.

• commscouncil.nz/younglions