Advertising students vaporise the competition to win big

A group of talented Swinburne advertising students have used their skills to design an anti-vaping behaviour change campaign, winning the 2022 Advertising Capstone Challenge.

Adriana Yung, Alex Tink, Alicia Henry, Chelsea Knight, Emma Rutherford and Linda Montealegre took home the gold after pitching to executives from the Cancer Institute NSW and communications agency Bastion Creative in Sydney at the national finals.

This year’s competition set the challenge of changing behaviour around ‘vaping’ (smoking e-cigarettes) to address the harmful practice among young people in NSW.

The Swinburne students’ campaign incorporated an innovative, tactile element through a ‘vending machine’ to dispense facts about vaping

Industry recognition

The Advertising Capstone Challenge runs annually and pushes students to network and connect with industry players in real-world scenarios.

Swinburne advertising lecturer David Reid said the competition highlighted the capability and creativity of Swinburne students.

“Pitches from all teams who made the national finals were of an amazing calibre, so I am humbled that our students took the crown,” he said.

“The team was so professional. Their research was in depth, their insights were original, their strategy was clever, and their creative and media execution was outstanding.”

Bastion Creative managing partner Ana Lynch said the winning students would have the opportunity to be mentored by and intern with the agency.

“This year’s ACC gave me great confidence in our future talent with all the teams doing exceptionally well,” she said.

“We’re working towards engaging the winning team in such a way that they can be directly involved with the roll out of the campaign into market, attending research debriefs, media briefings, creative reviews, pre- and post-production right through to launch, and ideally with every possibility of landing a full time but flexible role.”