News Limited puts Young Lion’s idea into practice

Demonstrating that there’s more to the Cannes Young Lions competition than fame and glory in the south of France, one of last year’s winners has seen her winning idea implemented by News Limited.

In the 2010 Young Lions competition, Eb Yusuf from OMD Melbourne not only took out the top media prize and went on to Cannes to compete in the worldwide Young Lions Competition, she also provided News Limited with a great insight into the media agency workplace.

News Limited has implemented Eb’s winning entry into the body+soul Media Agency Lifestyle Balance Check, a survey encouraging media agency staff to discover how healthy and balanced their lifestyle is.

To date, over 700 media agency employees have completed the surveyand the numbers are constantly rising. Respondents receive a score ineach of the six pillars of body+soul (health+healing, body+fitness,food+diet, parenting+pregnancy, beauty+indulgence, soul+happiness) andcan see how they compare against the industry average. They also gointo the draw to win one of twenty $250 David Jones gift vouchers. Onemedia agency will win a tailor-made agency day of balance, attended bybody+soul specialists to provide advice based on the agency’s resultsfrom the balance check, valued up to $5000.

Survey questions cover areas such as exercise, sleep, work hours, andconsumption of alcohol, coffee and energy drinks among others.

Eb Yusuf, who is director of strategy at OMD Melbourne, said: “body+soul isperfectly positioned as the brand to bring balance to our workhard/play hard industry. The team at News Limited have really embracedthis idea and have invested a lot into bringing it to life in asignificant and meaningful way. It’s been exciting to see this go froman award submission, to a fully actualised initiative.”

Tony Kendall, News Limited director of sales, added: “The mediaindustry is exciting and dynamic, but it can also play havoc withwork/life balance. We thought Eb’s idea was a great way to encouragethe industry to think about their life balance and there’s no betterbrand to do this with than body+soul. We’ve recently completed a studyon Australians’ changing attitudes towards health and this initiativeis a great engagement piece to connect with media agencies at the sametime. For Young Lions hopefuls, this shows that their idea can livebeyond the competition and make a real difference.”

The body+soul ‘lifestyle balance check’ is open to people working in media agencies and closes this weekend 10 April.

Entries into the 2011 Young Lions Competition close on 11 April.Shortlisted entrants for all three categories (Media, Print, Cyber) tobe announced on 6 May.