MDS Students Win at TRB Student Outstanding Radio Creative Awards

“Aged Beautifully, Unlike You” by Max Barrow & Maraea Walker was the winning creative. The radio-first integrated campaign was highly commended by the judges who commented on its “gutsy storytelling that provokes the listener from the get-go to get their attention, and charmingly takes them along for the lyrical ride. A humourous dance between the benefit that’s in your product, and not in your customers. Overall just great writing that will stand out in the landscape.”

The open brief this year allowed students to come up with a radio-first integrated campaign for a food subscription service e.g. My Food Bag, Woop etc. or a Goodman Fielder brand. Max and Maraea worked their campaign around the insight that when it comes to cheese, aging is great. But when it comes to you, it’s certainly not. Their radio creative gave Puhoi Valley a distinctive and brutally honest tone of voice with the end line: “Aged beautifully, unlike you”.

Jackson Bliss and Ashleigh Reid were runners-up for their campaign for Vogel’s “Sounds like Vogel’s”. Their entire campaign was focused around the distinctive sound you can hear when you put Vogel’s in the toaster because of the active ingredients in it – reinforcing the idea that Vogel’s is cooked, not toasted. Other aspects of this campaign included a Vogel’s alarm clock which allows people to wake up to the sound of Vogel’s, with the sound of the toaster popping once the person clicks the button to dismiss the alarm.

Kate Humphries, Course Leader at Media Design School, said "the whole competition from start to finish was a great experience for all the students. The brief to make a radio-first integrated campaign opened up the students’ thinking; the judges generously giving feedback to each student idea at the first round of judging ensured it was a learning curve for everyone; and the challenge for the finalist to record radio ideas on a shoestring was an excellent lesson in having to reach out to their networks to find voices and recording spaces. On that front, a big thank you to Fiona Edgar (Katherine Rawlings) for voicing our winning Aged Beautifully, Unlike You campaign for Puhoi Valley Cheeses, and to Greg Smith (Auckland Actors) for voicing our runner-up Sound of Vogel’s campaign.

We also owe an extra loud shout out to DDB for letting us use their sound studio to record both these ideas – and, in particular, a big thanks to Maxine Douglas for organizing the times for the studio, and to Milon Williams for being an all-round sound god.

As a competition for the students we know that the feedback and respond nature of the Student Orca judging process, that Ally Watt has worked out with the judges, does pay dividends because- lo and behold - Rebecca Sharp and Matt Aitken, two students from MDS who went through that process last year, were actual finalists in the professional Orcas this year.