MADC ‘Student of the Year’ Award winners Laura Petrucelli and Rohan Cooke win first prize of $2,000 cash in The Age Creative Raw competition

The surprise client for the day was Renault and the brief was for their new electric vehicle, the Fluence ZE, launching in Australia next year.

The team of Laura Petrucelli and Rohan Cooke (pictured above with The Age Publisher David Hoath), will have their winning concept produced and published in The Age in the new year.

Throughout the day, the teams had access to senior creative mentors, with GPY&R creative director Chris Northam and Ant Simmons as well as Onion Communications creative partner Richard Patterson generously offering their time and advice.

As well as having their ad produced, the winning team was given $2000 in cash prizes by David Hoath. Runners up Louise Khong and Laura Haberfield won $1000 and third place getters Lauren Massimo and Oliver Ward won $500.

The Age Creative Raw competition is becoming known as an incubator for creative talent in Melbourne. Over the past few years, the competition’s winners have all gone on to win other awards and secure full time jobs.

Each year, The Age researches brand awareness before the winning ad launches and runs post-campaign testing to enable them to put together a case study.

David Hoath said the competition is important for getting a new generation of creatives to think differently about newspaper as a medium.

Says Hoath: “At The Age, we take Creative Raw very seriously. Each year, we have seen some of the freshest and most innovative thinking around using newspapers. But equally importantly, our campaign testing allows us to show advertisers that creativity makes a difference to an ad’s effectiveness.”