This Year's Adfest Young Lotus Winners Is Team Manilla

Congratulations to Abigail Montana and Margarita Salvador from Lowe Philippines in Manila, who are the winners of this year’s Young Lotus trophy, which they collected at the first of two Award Presentations on Friday 20th March.

Montana (pictured right) and Salvador (pitched left) were one of 13 teams competing in this year’s Young Lotus Workshop, hosted by Dentsu Aegis Network. The brief was to create a campaign in just 24-hours that would get each team their dream job with their dream ECD at their dream agency.

Montana and Salvador also won the Young Lotus Popular Vote, which was determined after the ‘Dentsu Aegis Network Presents Young Lotus 2015 Fresh Blood’ Speaker Session on 20th March when delegates were subsequently invited to vote on their favorite team.

The other four finalist teams are: Kroekkiat Chanthakitnukul and Menaka Chakritthakul, The Leo Burnett Thailand in Bangkok; Sahil Monish Gunesekere and Tara Stephanie Weerasinghe, Grant McCann Erickson in Colombo; Sarah Ramadhania Putri and Reza Putranta, Xion Advertising Agency in Jakarta; and Alan Choong and Wendy Aw from TBWA Singapore. 

“Advertising is a tough business and as you grow more experienced, you face a lot of rejections: ‘You can’t do this, you shouldn’t do that.’ After a while senior creative get jaded and they don’t bother to try new, dangerous things anymore, whereas young people don’t know better. It’s very important to get the brightest and bravest young people into our business, and a forum like this is great because it focuses on young creatives and what they can bring to the table,” says Ted Lim, Regional Chief Creative Officer for Dentsu Aegis Network Asia Pacific, who was Co-Chairman of this year’s Young Lotus Workshop, a function he shared with Dick van Motman, Chairman and CEO for Dentsu Aegis Network Southeast Asia.

“All the teams came up with a different idea and a different approach, I was really surprised to see that. They all had their own unique point of view, which is really wonderful,” says Akira Kagami, Global Executive Creative Advisor for Dentsu Inc., Japan and Chief Instructor for this year’s Young Lotus Workshop.

This year’s challenge tasked 26 young creatives with pitching themselves as the hottest art-director/copywriter team the world doesn’t know yet.

To help them with their task, the young creatives enjoyed a series of inspiring seminars presented by some of Dentsu Aegis Network’s top luminaries, including Jeffry Gamble (Executive Creative Director, McGarryBowen Greater China), Yukio Nakayama (Creative Advisor, Dentsu Inc.), Kei Shimada (Global Director of Innovation and Business Development, CDC, Dentsu Inc.). Marie Gruy (Regional Head of Insight, Carat Asia Pacific), James Hawkins (President, Dentsu Digital Capabilities, Southeast Asia & CEO Dentsu Mobius) and Takemi Furuta (President and CEO, Dentsu Plus Thailand).

Cities represented at this year’s Young Lotus Workshop: Fresh Blood were Bangkok, Colombo, Dhaka, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Mumbai, Singapore, Taipei and Tokyo.

Young Lotus Workshop is part of Adfest's long-term commitment to provide a learning forum for the creative industry and is conducted every year. An advertising association from each country organises a local competition and selects and funds a winning team of two participants to attend. Young Lotus Workshop The workshop, accommodation and ADFEST attendance of participants is funded directly by Adfest.