MDS AdSchool duo take out Google Student Axis Award
Media Design School students Bella Rākete & Sam Taunton-Clark are celebrating their huge win at New Zealand’s 2022 Axis Awards - the country’s premier event which recognises creative excellence.
The duo took out the esteemed Google Student Axis Award – the latest in MDS’s 6 year winning streak at the Axis Awards, which are organised by the NZ Communications Council.
Bella and Sam’s winning campaign, which they worked on with the Breast Cancer Foundation in New Zealand is called Breast Cancer Captcha. It used Google’s reCAPTCHA to help people look for the eight signs of breast cancer. Their idea was extended with the use of Google Lens to detect signs of breast cancer in people’s own photos which could be submitted to a secure app.
“That was a hard-won achievement in itself, so it was both a relief and a delight to see them taking out the actual award," says Kate Humphries, Programme Director - Creative Advertising.
The Google Student Axis brief challenged students to pick a brand at a NZ agency and come up with an idea that uses Google technology and/or real estate to express the brand’s purpose in an innovative way.
Out of 35 ideas submitted by MDS and AUT students for the first round of judging, 12 finalists from MDS and eight from AUT made it through to the second round of judging. All those teams had to respond to the judges’ feedback before resubmitting.
The second round of judging whittled those 20 ideas down to a final shortlist of three, resulting in the exciting win for Bella and Sam, whom landed a position as Junior Creatives at Special earlier this year.
