Kinsale ‘Young Sharks’ Competition Winner Announced

The winner of the Kinsale Shark Awards ‘Young Sharks’ competition for creatives under 26 has been announced. 

24-year-old Aditya Hariharan, a Copywriter from MemacOgilvy in Dubai won with his entry, ‘Perspective’ giving an altogether upside-down take on the Sharks

Speaking about the idea behind the work, Aditya said:”Being a copywriter, I wanted to keep the ad visually simple. I doodled around with different shapes and stumbled upon the shark fin/speech bubble layout, that I thought was quite interesting. After exhausting all shark-related puns, I decided to keep the headline simple too, so I put everything together, crossed my fingers, and hit submit!”

In second and third place respectively are Dublin-based Chris Kennedy with ‘Carnival Winner’, and Portuguese entrants João Vaz and Sebastião Seguro with ‘SHAAAAAAAAARK’.

The entries were judged by Mike Mesbur, ECD Ogilvy Ireland. Commenting on the work, Mike said: "The top three submissions all showed fresh thinking combined with a clarity of execution that really nailed a great communications idea. While there wasn't much to separate them, I chose my winner because it dared to show us a conceptual twist that was right under our noses all along: an upside-down shark fin can look just like a speech bubble.”

As well as UAE, Ireland and Portugal,Young Shark entries came in from the UK, USA, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Switzerland,Singapore, Czech, Estonia, Israel, Canada, Australia, Dominican Republic and Hungary.