Team Chopsticks takes home dentsu’s Young Innovators Award

Young creatives from dentsu Aotearoa and Japan are celebrating their win at the recent Young Innovators Workshop held in Singapore.

Team Chopsticks, made up of Lucy Lim, a Junior Art Director from dentsu Creative Aotearoa and teammate Sayo Aketagawa, an Experience Designer and Copywriter from dentsu Tokyo, were announced as the overall winner of the Young Innovators Award 2025.

The workshop brings together the dentsu Creative Council, made up of CCOs and leaders from around the world, and 12 talented team members from across APAC, who took part in the workshop.

Split into teams of two, a Japanese team member was paired with a colleague from within the dentsu network, with representatives from New Zealand, India, Philippines, Taiwan and Singapore. 

Kids first

Teams were faced with a live client brief for a real-world client – Lion Corporation of Japan – focused on instilling positive oral health habits in younger generations. This was followed by presenting their best idea to a panel made up of the most senior creative leaders in the network. 

Taking their best idea and workshopping it further, they built out a detailed concept and presentation, incorporating gamification and reward systems, habit formation and sustainability. According to the judges Team Chopsticks delivered a pitch that clearly stood out for its bold and innovative thinking and were declared the overall winner of the Young Innovators Award for 2025. 

Reflecting on the week’s collaborations and winning pitch, Yasu Sasaki, dentsu’s Global Chief Creative Officer, says, “There are always exciting discoveries in the presentations of the Young Innovators. Not only because of the passion of the participants, but also because we were able to see innovation happen as a result of the encounter between two people from different countries and regions who had only just met, and who had very different talents and ways of thinking. 

The winning team really grasped the insights of the target people and presented an idea that was really out of the box. It was a platform with so much potential that ideas just kept coming from the CCOs from around the world who were on the judging panel. I can’t wait to see the ideas of the two winners come to life!” 

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