Jonathan Cruz and Saymon Medeiros from And Us won gold at the UAE Young Lions Digital Competition 2023
The 20th edition of the esteemed UAE Young Lions Digital Competition, hosted by Motivate Media Group and Motivate Val Morgan – the official UAE representatives of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, witnessed 21 teams across 15 agencies compete on Saturday, 4th March 2023.
The Judging and Awards Ceremony followed on Wednesday, 8th March 2023, with Jonathan Cruz and Saymon Medeiros from And Us winning Gold.
Jonathan Cruz and Saymon Medeiros will receive a full week’s delegate pass and an all-expense-paid trip to represent the UAE at the International Young Lions Digital Competition – part of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, in June 2023.
Adila Fataliyeva and Isha Sharma from Science and Sunshine secured Silver, while Haneen Chaarawi and Sebastian Galindo Rubiano from McCann Dubai and Rim Reda and Kezia Shamil from Leo Burnett tied for Bronze.
This year’s client brief was from RoadSafetyUAE – an award-winning CSR & engagement program established in 2014, which serves as a communication, improvement, and education platform for all traffic participants in the UAE. Participating teams were challenged to develop a creative and innovative, ‘root cause’ based, long-lasting and universally true awareness campaign to help change the behaviour and mindset of young drivers in the UAE.
Speaking at the awards ceremony, Thomas Edelmann, Managing Director, RoadSafetyUAE stated: “Young drivers represent about 50% of all road fatalities in the UAE and hence, this segment must be tackled by creating awareness for safe behavior, in a relevant manner. The team members of all twenty-one participating teams precisely represented the target audience, resulting in the creation of a series of genuinely insightful and pertinent campaigns that adhered to the guiding principle of “by them…for them!” As a means of honouring the outstanding creative endeavors, it would be ideal for the agencies behind the twenty-one teams to engage their clients and invite them to adopt the cause of road safety, while also leveraging some of the innovative concepts presented in partnership with RoadSafetyUAE. We want to thank Motivate Val Morgan and Getty Images for organizing and supporting the UAE Young Lions Digital Competition 2023, as well as the team members and the agencies behind them for their commitment and hard work.”
The jury panel for this year’s competition comprised of Girogia Fattoracci (Leo Burnett), Ingersol Jayakumar (Precise Communications), Andrej Arsenijevic (Commonwealth McCann), Steve De Lange (And Us), Anton Marais (Publicis Middle East), Anshuman Bhattacharya (Havas Middle East), Claudia Canas (FP7 McCann), David Willett (Weber Shandwick), Jordache Fernandes (KEKO Dubai), Raja Rizkallah Nadim (Science & Sunshine), Saleh Elghatit (Serviceplan), Rodrigo Scapolan (TBWA\RAAD), Rita Harbie (Saatchi & Saatchi MEA), and Robert Habib (C2 Communications)
Ian Fairservice, Managing Partner, Motivate Media Group, said: “This year has seen a notable increase in the number of entries, signifying the industry’s progress and resilience in the aftermath of the pandemic. I was mightily impressed with the quality of the work produced by the future of the creative industry. As always, it was extremely difficult to narrow down the top submissions but in the end there had to be a winning team – I want to congratulate everyone who put their all into the competition, but especially the winners, Jonathan Cruz and Saymon Medeiros from And Us, who I’m sure will be great ambassadors during this year’s Cannes Lions event.”
The UAE Young Lions Digital Competition – hosted by Motivate Media Group and Motivate Val Morgan and supported by Getty Images (exclusive image provider of the competition), aims to unveil the brightest creative minds from across the UAE, and is part of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity – the world’s biggest celebration of creativity in communications. The 2023 festival will take place between 19-23 June at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès in Cannes, France.
Motivate Media Group and Motivate Val Morgan – the official representatives of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in the UAE, hosted an awards ceremony on Wednesday 14th September 2022 to celebrate this year’s winning agencies.
The 2022 Cannes Lions Festival received a total of 358 entries from the UAE, of which 61 received shortlists and 22 won Lions – including 2 Grand Prix, 2 Gold, 13 Silver and 5 Bronze Lions.
This year’s winners across Outdoor, Print & Publishing, Media, Entertainment for Sport, Direct, Digital Craft, Creative Commerce, Social & Influencer, PR, and Film Craft categories include:
Creative heads and their respective team members from this year’s winning agencies attended the awards ceremony for an evening of networking over refreshments, followed by being presented with the most coveted trophies in the advertising industry – the LIONS.
Also in attendance were Rebecca Menezes and Eduardo Cesar from Saatchi & Saatchi MEA who represented the UAE at the Young Lions Digital Competition, and Fatma Al Suwaidi from American University in Dubai who represented the country at the Roger Hatchuel Academy student program as part of the Cannes Lions Festival.
Congratulations to all winning agencies, and we look forward to many more wins at next year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
United Arab Emirates wins 2 Grand Prix, 2 Gold, 13 Silver and 5 Bronze Lions at the 2022 Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.
Cannes Lions – the largest gathering in the creative marketing community, has announced all the winners of its 69th Festival awards, and UAE, once again, has emerged victorious at the event which took place between 20 – 24 June in Cannes, France.
United Arab Emirates won 22 Lions – 2 Grand Prix, 2 Gold, 13 Silver and 5 Bronze, across multiple categories, including first time wins in the category of Entertainment for Sport and Social & Influencer. The UAE also secured 61 shortlists at this year’s Festival.
This year’s winning agencies/clients from the UAE include Havas Middle East, Impact BBDO Dubai, Horizon FCB Dubai, TBWA\RAAD Dubai, VMLY&R Commerce MENA, Keko Dubai and UAE Government Media Office:
Simon Cook, CEO, LIONS, commented: “Cannes Lions is a global platform, and it’s been an incredible week, as the global creative community reunited in Cannes once again. Our community came together from across the globe, and from every corner of the industry, to drive progress through creativity, for business, the planet, and society at large. I would like to congratulate everyone who entered, who made the shortlists and who won a Lion to set the benchmark for creative excellence on the global stage.”
2022 also witnessed 13 professionals from the creative marketing/communication community represent the United Arab Emirates at the Cannes Lions Festival as awarding and shortlisting jury members:
Ali Rez (Regional Executive Creative Director – Impact BBDO Dubai), Priya Sarma (Head of Corporate Affairs & Sustainability – Unilever), Akhilesh Bagri (Chief Creative Officer – Serviceplan Middle East), Paul Banham (Regional Executive Creative Director – MullenLowe MENA), Lucy Harvey (Managing Director Middle East, Turkey, India & Africa – Hill+Knowlton Strategies Middle East) and Ali Cheikhali (Creative Strategy Lead, Creative Works MENA/TR/SSA – Google) were part of the awarding jury across Print & Publishing, Sustainable Development Goals, Brand Experience & Activation, Industry Craft, PR and Creative Commerce respectively. Shortlisting jury members included Alok Gadkar (Executive Creative Director & Managing Director – Group Partnership), Racha Makarem (Chief Executive Officer MENA – Starcom MENA), Aunindo Sen (Executive Creative Director – FP7 McCann), Ivan Bormaister (Associate Creative Director – M&C Saatchi UAE), Dana Tahir (General Manager – Red Havas ME), Pablo Maldonado (Executive Creative Director – Grey Dubai) and Till Hohmann (Chief Creative Officer MENA – Memac Ogilvy) across Health & Wellness, Media, Direct, Film, PR, Design and Outdoor respectively.
Representing the UAE at this year’s International Young Lions Digital Competition (for young creative below the age of 30 years in the digital category) and the Roger Hatchuel Academy (a mentorship programme for university students in the field of creative communications), were Rebecca Menezes and Eduardo Cesar Guimarães from Saatchi & Saatchi MEA, and Fatma Al Suwaidi from American University in Dubai.
As the official representatives of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in the UAE, Motivate Media Group and Motivate Val Morgan warmly congratulates all Lion winners from the UAE, and the jury members and young talent who represented the country at this year’s Festival.
Source: Cannes Lions ‘The Work’
