Not Worrying About Feasibility, Budgets Helped Aussies Shine at Young Creative “Olympics”

Australia’s Young Lions representatives credit their award-winning efforts at Cannes 2025 to prioritising ambitious, authentic work.

The five pairs of under-30s secured a Silver, Bronze, and two shortlistings across Marketing, Digital, Media, Film, and PR competitions during the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.

Speaking at ‘Cannes Download’ event in Sydney yesterday, for Advertising Council Australia and AWARD’s This Way Up festival, M+C Saatchi copywriter and co-Bronze medalist in the Digital Competition, Amy Morrison, said the team only had 24 hours from brief to presentation.

“In the usual scenario, we would spend maybe 24 hours apart before coming together, but we had maybe an hour to be apart before coming together [for this] process.”

Amy said “cracking that insight early” was key, and noted the work that does well is usually ambitious and authentic.

“Work that's ambitious and really goes all in on one idea, no matter how silly it sounds at the beginning, and work that's authentic [is what works]. Staying authentic and finding a genuine truth, something that people can relate to.”

Her partner, M+C Saatchi art director Laura Murphy, added the nature of the competition made the brief feel more open.

“We were given a problem and a cause, but it wasn't necessarily a brief in the conventional sense that we were used to. We were essentially asked to save the bees [and] the quick realisation was, ‘we're not going to solve the entire issue of bees in 24 hours.’”

Instead, the pair worked to redefine the problem to something actionable, prizing achievability while still pushing themselves creatively.

“We had to balance creativity, bravery, and wanting to make a real difference with something that feels actionable and doable,” Laura said.

“We had our client in the room and our presentation, and we didn't want to look her in the eye and be like we've come up with this brand new technology that doesn't exist and can't actually help you.

“It's nice working on something that has less constraint than a client environment.
“It really trains you and hones your thinking outside of your work.”

The opportunity to compete on the global stage was also a strong motivator for Laura.

“None of us will pretend we're not extremely competitive,” she added.

“The desire to win is definitely a motivator, but also the idea that you're all the best creatives under 30, up against the best… you have that drive to get onto the global stage and really refine your thinking.”

Google Australia brand marketing manager, and Marketing Competition Silver medalist, Keira Spencer agreed the opportunity to work creatively in a different environment was an invaluable experience.

“Being able to break out the constraints of our day-to-day jobs, where you think, ‘Is this fully feasible, what's the budget’... not having to think about those tricky questions for 24 hours and to just go into a problem with very few rules helped expand our creativity in ways we probably don't do enough in our day-to-day work,” Keira said.

“It felt like the Olympics for young creatives.”

Keira and her partner, Google Australia associate product marketing manager, Jenney Kim, don’t usually respond to briefs, but their work still tends to hinge on a specific, core insight, framing their thinking from “strategy to creative”.

“Coming from client side, we can't really hinge on the really big creative bets, but this competition… we were really able to flourish [creatively] in a way that really unlocked a lot of inspiration for when we went back to our day jobs,” Jenney said.

Despite the Marketing Competition’s 24-hour time constraint, Jenney and Keira insisted on attending the festival on that day, be it “talks, lunches, or a little bit of rosé”.

“Our CMO at Google Australia gave us a little bit of advice: don't try to get too many voices in your head,” Jenney said.

“We knew once we landed on a really good insight, which luckily we landed on quite quickly, it was just about turning it into a great creative idea with a lot of impact.”

While time was of the essence for the Digital and Marketing teams, Cocogun creative director Loz Maneschi and creative copywriter Lewis Clark relished the Film Competition’s 48-hour deadline.

“It always makes our work so much better, having that deadline,” Loz said.

The pair were “super intentional” in their preparation for the festival, putting themselves in a “boot camp” and reaching out to their favourite directors for advice.

“We had long coffees with the people from Revolver and Good Oil, who taught us how to shoot on the fly, interesting point of view shots, shooting on trains and at sunrise.

“We packed a production studio in our carry-on. We went over there with a Black Magic camera and a GoPro.”

Though they had some idea of what they might do in the competition, it all “went out the window quite quickly”. They were eventually shortlisted for their 60-second spot, responding to a brief for Ovarian Cancer Day.

“We had a 30-minute walk a few times a day, and we noticed all these ads and posters in shop windows. The female figure was everywhere, which is nothing new, we see that all the time.

"It got us thinking about the brief, and how the female form, over centuries, is seen in social media, politics, and art… from the outside. But the really important part of us, the inside, is the part that's killing so many women all over the world.

“By 2pm the next day, we were shooting our ad in [a gallery] in Nice.”