“Young Sh*ts” — Lauren Meadows & Mary Buzbee
Each month, Young Shits chooses big industry players to write a very simple brief and judge each submission from young advertisers. Last month, our very own creative duo won the international competition. Here’s how.
We think everyone at LEWIS is the sh*t. But not everyone wins awards for being the actual “sh*t” — except for maybe junior creatives, Mary Buzbee and Lauren Meadows. In July, they placed first in Young Shits, an international advertising competition for young creatives.
Young Shits isn’t your average advertising competition. Initially geared toward advertising students to help them network and find a job, it’s now open to students and young professionals.
Each month, Young Shits chooses big industry players to write a very simple brief and judge each submission. All the winners receive personalized feedback on their idea, but the grand-prize winners get to meet the big-whig judges, either in person or digitally.
The purpose of the competition is for students and young professionals to challenge themselves creatively, network with industry leaders, and ultimately, get recommended for jobs and create award-winning projects for their portfolios.
We interviewed Mary and Lauren about their experience with Young Shits. Here’s what they had to say.
Q: What was the brief you were given?
A: We had to figure out a way to get people to not mooch off other people’s Netflix accounts and get their own subscriptions. Netflix loses millions of dollars from subscribers who watch from a friend’s account, so we had to incentivize people to make their own accounts.
Q: What was your idea?
A: We determined that we needed to put the deciding power into the subscribers’ hands. Our solution was to teach account holders that despite what they were taught as a child, sharing isn’t nice. We based our creative off Roger Hargreaves’s famous Mr. Men and Little Miss children’s books, which uses single dominant personality traits to convey moral lessons.
We created an additional character called Mr. Stingy. His job is to show account holders that it’s a good thing to be stingy.
Q: What was your plan to promote Mr. Stingy?
A: Our idea was to utilize out-of-home, social, and digital media to tease what appears to be a new Netflix original series.
When the series “drops,” they’ll actually get a message from Mr. Stingy about how sharing is wrong. We’d then offer them some incentive to kick everyone off their account — a whole year of Netflix for free. The next time the moocher logs in, they’ll see a message telling them they got the boot. We’d then offer them a month free if they create their own account.
Q: How long did it take you to develop this idea?
A: Honestly, the thought just came to us. We weren’t really planning to enter until the last minute. We started talking about it and decided to do it. We came into the office on a Saturday to put everything together. In total, it took about two days.
Q: What award did you win exactly?
A: We won first place in the professional’s division, the Professional Shit. For students, there are multiple levels of winners — The Shit that won, The Shit that came so close to winning, and The Shortlisted Shit.
Q: Mary, this isn’t your first time winning something for Young Shits, right?
A: Right. I was part of a winning team when I was a recent grad with Alexia Corte, who is also a Junior Art Director at Lewis. Our brief was getting people to vote in the election. (You can check out their brief here.)
Q: Why do you think it’s important for young creatives to participate in competitions like this?
A: When you get out of school, you think you’re going to do these big things, but you don’t start out doing those. As young creatives, typically you’re doing more of the grunt work in your everyday job. If you want to grow in your career and take on bigger things, your book has to be good, and competitions are a great way to build it. Most of the industry is about awards, so it’s a big deal to have award-winning work in your book. For us, we wanted to do it because there’s a lot of freedom. You get to be the boss of your own project. It’s a good reset for your brain and a great way to keep your creative muscles flexed.
Check out in-house young shits’ project on dropbox here.
