MAD Students Sweep Awards Season

OK, we’re biased. It’s not exactly a secret that we’re insanely proud of our students.

But this year, in particular, our bias has nothing to do with it: our students just won 10% of the available New Blood awards from D&AD for 2020.

As many will know, a D&AD Award is one of the most prestigious prizes available to an up-and-coming creative. They are renowned creative accolades—judged by industry leaders and submitted to by the most innovative minds in the world.

This year, of the 213 New Blood Award Winners, no less than 37 of the winning teams came from MAD campuses around the world.

Let’s take a look at some of these mind-blowing projects, and the future superstars who put them together.

Black Pencil: HerSNKRS

HerSNKRS is the rarest kind of idea: a concept that benefits commerce, customer, and society at large.

No wonder then that it won a Black Pencil at this year’s D&AD awards.

What do you think? Can you imagine the collaborative aspect of this idea hitting it big?

We can.

Team:

Location:

Miami Ad School Madrid

https://www.dandad.org/awards/new-blood/2020/nike/3788/her-snkrs/

Yellow Pencil: Land-Markers

In an effort to show what HSBC is all about, these young guns created a campaign that promotes worldwide inclusivity.

How do they do it? By calling attention to an interesting phenomenon: that many of the world’s most iconic landmarks were designed and built by foreigners to the country they sit in. As the team puts it, “Architects, designers, and artists traveled thousands of miles to help create what we now recognize as emblematic structures of national pride.”

By telling the story of how some of the most iconic landmarks were made, we showed that when cultures unite, creativity breaks boundaries.

This campaign illustrates international collaboration and honors the Land-Markers: travelers that make the world, their world.

https://www.dandad.org/awards/new-blood/2020/hsbc/3594/land-markers/

Team:

Location:

Miami Ad School Buenos Aires

Yellow Pencil: LEGO Six Brick Kit

How can LEGO stay relevant as the world changes around them? Obviously, it’s a household name…but

Our students, Lavina Chandwany, Rhea Kumar, and Rachel LeBlanc, were tasked with finding a way get teens using LEGO again.

Their idea focuses on understanding the lives of today’s adolescents and meeting them where they are. The primary insight: that for huge swath of the younger population, climate change and its effects are very much top of mind.

To appeal to that fundamental concern, our team proposes the Six Brick Kit: a way for young people to express their creativity on the world stage, through social media challenges and takeover of some of the world’s most iconic shopping destinations.

6 LEGO bricks have the possibility to be combined in more than 915 million different ways. They are the epitome of reusable entertainment. By focusing on those possibilities, the team intends to re-energize the LEGO brand.

https://www.dandad.org/awards/new-blood/2020/the-lego-group/3580/lego-six-brick-kit/

Team:

Location:

Miami Ad School, San Francisco

Yellow Pencil: Audible – Screen time

There’s no doubt that screen time is one of the most pervasive and insidious temptations facing many of us today. Between phones and tablets and the ol’ TV…it’s almost always there.

Audible, from Amazon, has an incredible opportunity: to offer people the stimulation and entertainment they crave…without the screen. Our team of creatives used that opportunity to its fullest. They crafted digital billboards that functioned as see-through screens, and asked users to consider exchanging screentime, for Audible time.

As with many great ideas, the key is in the simplicity. It’s not a request for users to fundamentally alter their behavior. Rather, the campaign offers an opportunity to pursue similar habits with a slightly healthier twist.

https://www.dandad.org/awards/new-blood/2020/audible/3739/audible-screen-time/

Team:

Location:

Miami Ad School Berlin

Yellow Pencil: Sports Beyond Sports

Nike believes in the power of sport. Not just as entertainment—as a tool of empowerment and social change.

The project brief presented to our winning team challenged them to promote women’s activity in sport. In response, our team chose not to approach female athletics exclusively, but rather women’s involvement in all aspects of the sports industry. There are, of course, all kinds of roles to play in the world of athletics (beyond the court or field): journalism, product design, management, physical therapy, etc…

And yet today, only 10% of those jobs are held by women.

Sports Beyond Sports is a new kind of campaign—built to empower girls and women to find their passion in the sports industry and pursue a a career…all while supported by the Nike+ girls community.

https://www.dandad.org/awards/new-blood/2020/nike/3759/sports-beyond-sports/

Team:

Location:

Miami Ad School Madrid

Yellow Pencil: Energy for 2020

The insight behind the Energy for 2020 campaign is simple and clean: energy drinks are seen as unhealthy. Meanwhile, popular culture is moving in the direction of clean eating and holistic manufacturing. What happens when the avocado-toast-crowd stops buying energy drinks?

Here’s how the team describes their solution:

“Yula is plant-based energy. But it’s not only guarana berries, tribal spirits and reforestation. Yula is made of 2020, with all its contradictions. We don’t judge what you do, but power you to do it.

Energy for 2020. Whatever that means.