Brand Union, sponsor and organiser of the Creative Union Awards, has announced its 2014 winners from Cape Town. Sonwabise Siwela, Wesley Billet and Calvin Bowen – students at Vega School of Brand Leadership (Vega) – received the award for their inspired solution to the Castle Lite Platinum Pack campaign launch brief. Their prize includes a cash reward, a two-month work placement with Brand Union Cape Town, and the handcrafted Brain-on-Brain (BOB) trophy that will be presented at the Vega graduation ceremony early next year.
The Creative Union Awards were piloted with Vega in 2013. This year, 115 students were briefed by Brand Union to launch Castle Lite’s new platinum 470ml re-sealable bottle. The catch? Students were asked to launch the bottle without using any above the line (ATL) media. The nature of the brief required collaboration between strategy and creativity, in order to deliver an idea that would “conquer mediocrity”.
“The results we see in the work when creatives and strategists work closely together are phenomenal. It’s about breaking down perceptions that the two disciplines need to live apart from each other as separate phases of a job, and rather fusing them together,” says Martinique Wilkinson, creative director at Brand Union.
The winning work was selected from 28 team submissions, after three rounds of presentations. Andrea Quaye from SAB formed part of the judging panel, and commended the top team for being “bold, single-minded and direct with their idea. They focused on one idea and ran with it. Creating a spectacle that got people interacting with and talking about the product”.
The collaboration between strategy and creativity is emphasised strongly in Vega’s curriculum
