This year’s Advertising Capstone Challenge (ACC) took on attitudes to vaping with campaign ideas pitched to executives from the Cancer Institute NSW and Bastion Creative.

The competition enables students to network and connect with the advertising industry through collaboration and competition by working on a real-world brief with clients and industry partners.

Advertising students from Swinburne University of Technology, The University of Queensland, and Western Sydney University were given the opportunity to pitch their campaign ideas in response to the The Vaping Behaviour Change Brief to address the issue of vaping among young people in NSW.

Six teams from three universities made it to the finals which were hosted at The Cancer Institute NSW head office, with team Brella Creative from Swinburne University of Technology taking out the top position.

“Brella presented a very compelling strategy and creative idea on what is an extremely challenging brief. Their use of qualitative and quantitative research gave them valuable insights into the audience, the problem and potential solutions. The judges felt their proposed campaign was likely to be effective at helping the audience to understand the harm of vapes and at driving reappraisal of the risk inherent in their own vaping behaviour,” stated Sarah King, planning director, Bastion Creative.

“Pitches from all University teams that made the ACC National finals were of an amazing calibre, so I am humbled that Brella Creative from Swinburne University took the crown. They killed it. The team was so professional, research was in-depth, insights original, strategy clever, and creative and media execution outstanding,” added David Reid, lecturer, Advertising Swinburne University of Technology.

Ana Lynch, managing partner, Bastion Creative, commented, “This year’s ACC gave me great confidence in our future talent with all the teams doing exceptionally well. Everyone at Bastion is very excited to welcome the winning Swinburne team to take part in mentorship and internship opportunities with the agency.”

In previous years, the students have pitched to clients from Tourism Australia, McDonald’s Australia, Lion Dairy (Dare Iced Coffee), 7-Eleven (Slurpee), and Cricket Australia (WBBL).

Cover image l-r: Simon Langley (Bastion), John Greig (Western Sydney Uni), Ana Lynch (Bastion), David Reid (Swinburne Uni), Angela Morris (Bastion), Dr Nicolas Pontes (University of Queensland), Sarah King (Bastion)