'Fingerlympics' Idea Wins New Stars Competition

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.

The winning team comes from Cheil in Korea: congratulations to Jung S. Hahn and Chuwon Cho (team “Dog Star”) who won the competition with their ‘Fingerlympics Korea’ campaign.                   

New Stars an important initiative because it's designed to inspire young professionals to further their career in advertising. This year’s judges said they were truly impressed by the passion of competitors, with 70 participants from seven countries. After a day of mentoring, the teams had 24 hours to respond to the following brief: generate awareness of the 2018 Winter Olympics and Paralympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, and increase people’s desire to attend.

“We saw lots of great ideas, but in the end Team 'Dog Star' won Gold because they understood exactly what we were looking for in the briefing, and came up with a great idea to make people feel engaged with the winter games and also to motivate them to come to South Korea,” says Gabriel Araujo, Executive Creative Director and VP at Ketchum / Little George Brazil. 

“Their idea was fresh, inviting consumers’ collaboration, and had a great sense of humor that made all the jury feel good in voting for Gold. It’s well deserved and I wish that every New Star who participated this year feels inspired to come back soon in 2018."

Jen Speirs, Creative Director at BMF Sydney, also judged this year’s New Stars AD Competition.

“It’s so important to give the next generation of creatives opportunities like this because we work in a pressure cooker sometimes. Being able to go like a bat out of hell and then come out the other end with one idea that is going to be better than any other on the table – if you can do that well, you’re sorted,” says Speirs.

“There’s sleeplessness, a ridiculous deadline, no second chances, competing with other creative teams and the temptation to party – New Stars is essentially a concentrated little snapshot of the career you have ahead.”

Regarding this year’s Gold winners, she says: “Their idea was not like any others. To create Fingerlympics – getting people collecting and participating with little mini Olympics games – it was so refreshing. We could all see the potential. It showed a real understanding of the brief, of human behaviour, of what’s going to get people excited. We all loved it from the moment we saw it, and it was the one we all remembered at the end, and kept talking about. It was not ridiculous for the sake of it: we could genuinely see this idea getting off the ground.”

Congratulations to Silver-winning team Maho Fujita + Yuka Kamakura from 1-10design Japan. There were also three Bronze-winning teams: Juil Lim + Yoonhee So from INNOCEAN Worldwide in Korea; Shoichiro Saikawa + Sasuke Hatao from ADK Japan; and Nahoko Wakida from McCann Erickson + Yajima Gentaro from Hakuhodo Japan.

Overall, Speirs said that this year’s New Stars were awesome: “There wasn’t a single entry that looked like people hadn’t thrown their absolute all into. I think that there are so many things you can’t control in this business – timelines, budgets etc – the only thing you can control is the amount of effort you put in. And judging by the level of energy, effort and enthusiasm put into this year’s entries, these creatives are very worthy of their New Stars title indeed.”

Araujo agrees: “I was happy because I saw them push themselves to another level and that’s exactly what we need to do on a daily basis to be better everyday.”

“I felt that some of the competitors felt a little bit worried about what idea to choose with such a tight deadline. There were great ideas that responded to just one part of the briefing, mostly to drive awareness. We were looking for something that can generate awareness but also move people to feel inspired to attend the games and visit Korea. That’s the reason Jung Hahn and Chuwon Cho won the competition, because they understood all parts of the brief, and put in place a really fresh campaign with a lot of potential to be big.”

If you are interested in applying to take part in next year’s New Stars AD Competition, contact lydia@adstars.org