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Young Shark Creative Brief

Our annual competition for young advertising and design creatives.

For the winner, the glory of being named this year’s young shark, plus one of our famous sharks head trophies to prove it. For those not so lucky, there’ll be another brief next year (unless of course you’re over 26 next year, in which case remember the words of Brigitte Bardot - “It’s sad to grow old but nice to ripen”).

2023 Judge

Dan Cole - ECD Havas London

Dan has worked as a creative for over 20 years, at agencies such as Saatchi & Saatchi, DDB, Grey and is now ECD at Havas London. 

 

Dan most recently helping create the Buddy the Elf Christmas ad for ASDA. An ad that his mum and kids are actually proud of.

 

Along the way he’s picked up a bunch of shiny bits at Cannes, D&AD and more, for everything from butter to business banking, including a recent John Webster award for Bose at the British Arrows. 

Rules

  • Entrants must be under age of 27 at 31 Dec 2023

  • You can be employed, un-employed or studying.​

  • By entering your work you grant us permission to use your entry for publicity purposes, regardless of whether the entry wins.

  • The entries will be judged by a senior Creative Director from a major advertising agency.

  • We reserve the right not to make any award if the creative standard has not been met.

  • The decision made by the Creative Director is his/her personal subjective opinion and for reasons of confidentiality we do not provide further comment on individual entries.​

  • Your entry should be sent to: info@kinsalesharks.com 

  • Opening date for entries is 1 May 2023

  • Closing date is 1 July 2023

  • Shortlist is announced 15th July 2023

  • Winner announced 1 Aug 2023​​

2023 Winner - Roisin O' Mahony

'The Grim Reaper ReBrand'

Dan Cole: ‘Of all the entries, this really demonstrated a clever use of humour and frankly, made me smile each time I read it. A strong, simple idea and well written. It also manged to bring a lovely human side to that old familiar ‘face of death’ - old Grim Reaper even became quite likeable. If a product like this ever did exist, it would need the brains of someone like Rosiin to handle it expertly. Congrats.’

2023 Shortlist

Dan Cole: ‘Congratulations to all the entrants of this year’s Young Sharks. A tough brief has thrown up some really wild approaches. Got to admit I was quite relieved to see that many chose to embrace humour for what was quite a challenging subject – I was settling down for quite a dark few nights otherwise. The shortlisted ideas were ones that really made me think about the subject in new ways and I could see standing up against the flak the product might her. They also showed that rare ability to make a real leap from the brief ‘

Maria Hopwood & Donya Pandkhahi
William Baxter
Dallas Rodgers & Marcus Howard (runners-up)
Catherine Hayes & 
Leah Anderson Griffin (runners-up)

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