BUSAN, SOUTH KOREA—Ad Stars has announced the winners of this year’s New Stars AD Competition for junior advertising professionals who have less than three years’ experience or are aged under 30. Congratulations to Zach Lim & Villarica Manuel from Wunderman Thompson Philippines, who won Gold for their ‘BusanWave’ campaign.
The award-winning campaign by Wunderman Thompson Philippines’ Zach Lim and Villarica Manuel, “Busan Wave”:
New Stars helps young professionals to further their career by competing with 33 teams from around the world. This year, the teams had just 24-hours to respond to the following brief: to come up with a ground breaking social media promotional plan to attract more international tourists to Busan – and boost the image of the city as a global tourism destination.
“The teams had a day to write a reverse brief and create a presentation board or video that sold their idea. Overall, given the quick turnaround time, the results were seriously impressive. There was some excellent research, thinking and craft demonstrated – some bold stand-out ideas and a few concepts that Busan tourism should really consider running,” says Kim Pick, Executive Creative Director at VMLY&R New Zealand, who led the New Stars jury panel.
“‘Busan Wave’ stood out as a big platform idea that recognised the Korean Wave craze, and created a new sub-genre of Busan Wave – a more laid-back, beachy version of Korean Wave that could apply to music, drama, art and more. It didn’t just give a feeling for what the Busan experience would be like – it actually helped set a vision for tourism in the city,” Pick explains.
Congratulations to our two Silver-winning teams: Haehyun Lee and Uyeon Jeong from Daehong Communications, South Korea; and Noriaki Tanimura and Mai Kaneda from McCann Health Japan.
“The Silver-winning Korean team had an idea that could be packaged up and sold tomorrow – it was an end-to-end roll out for an app Meoggo (a clever play on words meaning both ‘what is it?’ and ‘eat’) where Busan taxi drivers could recommend all the best places to eat in the city. It was well-thought through and highly finessed.”
The award-winning campaign by McCann Health Japan’s Mai Kaneda and Noriaki Tanimura entitled “Slime to Smile”:
Pick says the jury had a tough decision awarding the top metal as there were a number of great contenders: “The Silver-winning team from Japan produced a stand-out piece of crazy left field thinking that had the judges laughing out loud. It focused on making an unlikely hero of the Busan slime eel – and recruiting a team of slime fanatics from around the world to descend on the city to study it (and enjoy it as a delicacy). It was bold and mad enough to actually be highly social and successful.”
John Bellarmine Javier and Henry Glo from Nuworks Interactive Labs in the Philippines won Bronze.
There were also three Crystal winners from Malaysia, Taiwan and Australia. Congratulations to Larissa Loh and Vickknesh Raj from Leo Burnett Malaysia; Jack Hsu and Easy Tsai from Wunderman Thompson Taipei; and Fiona McLeod and Emily Field from BMF Australia.
If you are interested in applying to take part in the 2020 New Stars AD Competition, contact eun05@adstars.org or lydia@adstars.org. For more information, visit adstars.org
