Six young advertisers will represent the country in Cannes
They will participate in a world advertising contest that gathers more than 50 countries.
Contest consists of mounting a complete campaign in less than 50 hours
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Irene Rodríguez S. irodriguez@nacion. com 09:42 p.m. 10/05/2010
Federico Nieto, Héctor Acuña, Ernesto Campabadal, Federico Rodríguez, Josué Alvarado and Jonathan Ramírez are already packing their bags -and their ideas- to travel to Cannes, France, where they will compete in a race against the clock to come up with the best advertising campaign.
(Right) Winning print ad by Federico Nieto and Héctor Acuña. The theme was aid for the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. (Left) Fragment of the winning video, made by Ernesto Campabadal and Federico Rodríguez. The theme was organ donation.ASCAP for LNThese six young publicists will represent Costa Rica in the Cannes Young Lions contest. This contest is the “youngest child” of the Cannes Lions, one of the most famous in the advertising world.
Only advertisers under 28 years old participate in the Cannes Young Lions.
The contest consists of creating, in 30 hours -in the case of print and Internet- or 50 hours -in the case of video-, a complete advertising campaign, in which pairs of advertisers participate.
At the beginning of the competition, each pair receives the theme on which they must work, and from that moment on a race against the clock begins to present the complete campaign before a jury made up of the most prestigious advertising agencies.
The Costa Rican representatives were selected by winning the different categories of the Young Lions: Creative Contest to Stimulate Young Costa Rican Talent. The young people were awarded yesterday in the auditorium of La Nación.
Nieto and Acuña won first place in the print category with a work that sought to motivate aid for the victims of Haiti. Their work shows the pocket of a pair of jeans forming a city under reconstruction. The message indicates that much help is still needed for the Haitian people.
“It was intense work, but the theme was very strong and lent itself to do very good things. We hardly slept that day, but the results were good and we managed to send a message,” said Nieto.
Campabadal and Rodríguez had the best video or film proposal , which consisted of promoting organ donation. In this work it is emphasized that many lives can be saved when a person dies, if he or she was concerned about donating his or her organs beforehand.
“The work is hard, but the topic lends itself to a lot. We had the help of many people in the street who did not know us, but wanted to help us,” said Campabadal.
Finally, Alvarado and Ramírez presented the best work for Internet or cyber. Their theme was to increase visitation and care of national parks. They created an interactive application in which several frogs die as the user clicks on the mousse. The message is to help preserve nature.
“Despite the pressure we were under, we really enjoyed it. It was a topic that has already been talked about a lot, so the challenge was to do something different to get people’s attention,” said Ramírez.
“In Costa Rica there is a lot of young talent. Last year, two Costa Ricans, Maia Livov and Jennifer Caldwell, won second place worldwide in the print category. This year, talented young people will also represent us,” said Dirk Stammes, president of the Costa Rican Association of Advertising Agencies and Commercial Communication Companies (Ascap), promoter of the contest in the country.
Preparation. These young people are now preparing for the world competition, in which they will face the best young publicists from more than 50 countries.
From now on, our representatives are focused on working as best and as fast as possible.
“Since we don’t know the theme that will be assigned to us, we are making an outline of how much time we should dedicate to each stage of the process. We are also looking at the winning entries from past editions to see, more or less, what trends are being sought in the contest,” said Nieto.
They are also working on controlling the time with a stopwatch and establishing ways to do their work more quickly.
“We are coming up with ideas faster. Normally, we have more time to do these jobs, so we have to time ourselves,” said Alvarado, winner of the cyber category.
For those who have to shoot video, the biggest challenge is getting people to collaborate in a country with a very different culture.
“The problem is that we are going to be in a foreign land. We don’t know how people will react when we ask them to collaborate with us, but we hope to find friendly people to help us,” Campabadal said.
The Cannes Young Lions competition will begin on June 19. Competitors will have 30 hours to complete print and online campaigns, and 50 hours to complete video proposals.
“The work of these guys is very good. We are confident that they will do a very good job and that they will return to the country with medals and, if not, with a broken back for all the work that was done,” commented Jorge Oller, member of Ascap.
