Yonsei University Students Win Gold at Ad Stars Young Stars Competition

AD STARS has announced the winners of this year’s Young Stars AD Competition for university and college students. The winning team comes from Yonsei University in South Korea: congratulations to Yohan Jeong, Hyungjun Cho and Yereen Shin.

Young Stars an important initiative because it's designed to inspire students to pursue a career in advertising. There were 118 participants from 11 countries this year. After a day of mentoring, the teams had 30 hours to respond to the following brief for Busan Air Cruise, a new cable car in Busan. The challenge was to encourage people to go for a ride not only once, but many times.

“This year is my third time being a jury for Young Stars – being part of the Young stars program is always exciting. Also, it is a good opportunity to find talent,” says this year’s Jury President, Seowon Park, Chief Creative Officer at ORICOM Korea, which designed the 2017 AD STARS trophy.

The team from Yonsei University won Gold because “their idea was clear and the execution was outstanding,” says Park.

Rindert Dalstra, Strategic Planner Digital at TBWA Group in Belgium, also judged this year’s Young Stars AD competition: “I find it important for students to work on real briefings and get early experience of how advertising works. The brief was a hard nut to crack. The Gold winner excelled not only in understanding the briefing but their execution was spot on.  With the limited time all the teams had, the jury was impressed with the quality of the output that was delivered.”

Marco Antonio do Nascimento, Creative Art Director at Demner, Merlicek & Bergmann says: “I am really glad to be part of the Young Stars Jury because it brings the unique opportunity to spot fresh talents from different cultures. The future of advertising lays in their hands, in a way, and the Young Stars program gives them the chance to be mentored and prepared for future challenges in their own careers.”

“The idea that won Gold was simple, with a clear message that understood the brief, and most important, creative. The teams had 30 hours to develop their concepts. What made a big impression on me is the fact that so many good ideas and executions were done in one day!”

Park adds: “This year, AD STARS is special for me. I had a long, long year designing the new AD STARS trophy. The production went on for so long due to the unique shape and material. I hope the students and all the winners enjoy it!”

Jonghun Kim, Yeonggeun Jang and Hyangdo Shin from Dankook University in South Korea won Silver. Two Bronze awards were awarded to: Sungwoo Choi (Korea Aerospace University), Jungeun Choi (Yonsei University) and Minsoo Kim (Hongik University) in South Korea; and Minju Song (Dankook University), Eunbin Shin (Sookmyung Women’s University) and Dohyee Gwon (Hallym University).

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