IPA Secures Snapchat Tie-Up to Accelerate Opportunity of a Career in Advertising for Young People

IPA president Julian Douglas is today launching a competition for all teens taking part in the industry’s nationwide careers open day Advertising Unlocked, to create a real-world ad campaign that will roll out on  Snapchat early next year.

The competition embodies and expands upon the aim of the Advertising Unlocked initiative, founded by Douglas in 2017, to ignite awareness and passion for a potential career within the world of advertising. Concurrently, the initiative provides agencies with an audience of fresh and diverse talent. This year, Advertising Unlocked will see c2,000 state school children aged 13 to 18 years old attending 75 agencies throughout this month (November).

The brief for the competition is for the ad industry to tackle the environmental issue of litter dropping in the UK which is on the rise post lockdown and ties into Julian’s IPA presidential THINK 10X agenda to demonstrate the power of advertising and creative solutions to help solve society’s problems. The winning work will be chosen by a panel of industry experts and will roll out on Snapchat in 2023 thanks to the platform providing free media space on their platform to support this 10X anti-littering initiative.

Says Julian Douglas, “Thanks to this incredible opportunity from Snapchat, we will be able to further spark these school children’s creativity and hopefully enthusiasm for a future career in our business, whilst simultaneously helping to solve a societal problem. This is more than just an exercise, the kids will be able to work on a real-life brief, tackling a real-world problem, and will see it rolled out in real-life across a dynamic platform. Given Snap’s core 13-18-year-old user base, they make the ideal media partner for this project. I commend all those agencies opening their doors to school children as part of Advertising Unlocked and send my best of luck to all the children taking part in this competition.”

Says Ed Couchman, UK general manager for Snap Inc, “Digital technology, especially Augmented Reality, have huge potential to help both tackle and raise awareness for important societal issues. It’s a pleasure to partner with the IPA to inspire the future minds of our industry. We can’t wait to see the creativity from the next generation of advertising talent and see the winning campaign come to life for the Snapchat community.”