Sweet Taste Of Success For Kiwi Students

Sweet Taste Of Success For Kiwi Students

Two creative students at Media Design School’s AdSchool picked up Best Student Brief at the 2011 Bees Awards in San Francisco last night – the first international social media marketing awards for the communications industry.

Ben Andrews (art director) and Craig Douglas (copywriter) won the award for their campaign ‘Dreaming in a foreign language’, created to a special brief for client Mango Languages. The campaign shows innovative use of Facebook to market language learning software. Another Media Design School team was also shortlisted as a finalist in the same category for their campaign, ‘Grow a little foreign man’.

The Best Student Brief award carries a cash prize, honey and an internship in San Francisco for the students at the end of their course.

“We’re genuinely over the moon to hear the news,” says winning student Andrews. “Craig and I want to thank Bees for giving us the opportunity to get our work out there. We were motivated to answer the Mango brief with an idea that was not only insight-based, but that would capture imaginations. We are both really excited about our placement in San Francisco and can’t wait to begin.”

AdSchool course leader Kate Humphries says she’s enormously proud of both the students.

“The worldwide student brief was really tough and we were up against very strong competition from Northern Hemisphere schools who were more than 2/3 of the way through their courses – whereas our guys were only six weeks in.”

Media Design School CEO Frances Valintine says that the school wants to convey special thanks to industry members, who helped the teams by giving honest feedback and appraisal.

“I especially want to thank The Common Room as well as Anthony and Iain from Special who took time to come in and critique the students’ work. One of the qualities that really distinguishes AdSchool from other creative advertising schools is the way the course is run. Students are essentially working in a simulated creative agency, in a similar environment and subject to the same deadline pressures. It’s what makes our graduates so valued and successful in the workplace.”

Winners were announced during an evening awards ceremony at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco last night. Media Design School representative Adriana Ayala, who was there to accept the award on behalf of the students, said that there was a huge crowd of excited supporters at the event.

“The awards ceremony went really well. It was an honour to be in such an exclusive company of innovative thinkers. It was a privilege to be able to go up on stage and accept the award on behalf of Ben and Craig. I think we all expect more brilliant things from these two in the near future!”

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