An, Duy and Vinh are all Professional Communication students at RMIT. Last year, the trio teamed up and won runner-up at the global D&AD New Blood Quickfire competition (also marking Vietnam’s first win). Their idea was creating an app to help extend phone lifespans and reduce electronic waste.
The team rated their experiences with Young Ones and New Blood Quickfire as vastly different, despite both being highly competitive creative contests.
Duy explained: “While the New Blood Quickfire brief asked us to take a macroscopic approach to disrupting the electronics sector to make it more sustainable, the Young Ones brief focused on the very niche luxury audio category and the equally narrow audience segment of the sophisticated affluent.”
“For the former, we had to take a step back to grasp the big picture. For the latter, we went digging deep into a very specific target audience to understand their insights. Two diverging approaches, yet equally exciting and insightful for us,” he said.
An elaborated: “We got into the Young Ones brief with an empty mind - like a blank canvas ready to be written on with as much knowledge as possible without making any assumptions. We challenged ourselves with an unfamiliar brief and unfamiliar target, and it was hugely rewarding.”
At RMIT School of Communication & Design, more and more students have taken part in international competitions in recent years, hoping to gain valuable lessons and experience for their future careers.
It’s not unusual for the School’s lecturers to conduct workshops with award-winning creatives, and for students to receive briefs from past competitions as assignments. With such preparations, students are more confident when entering international contests.
RMIT Advertising Lecturer Dr Soumik Parida and mentor of An, Duy and Vinh said: “I had never doubted the brilliance of our students. It was only a matter of time before the rest of the world knew about it. Still, I must admit that when we got the news, I felt extremely proud and happy to be part of Vietnam's first university to achieve this feat,” Dr Parida said.
“This demonstrates that our strategy for work integrated learning is moving in the right direction and we are going to win many more global awards in the near future.”
Meanwhile, Vinh gave a shout-out to the other two RMIT teams who were also shortlisted in this year’s Young Ones competition.
“It’s an amazing mark of Vietnamese creativity on the international stage and I personally believe the ideas that the other teams put forward were brilliant in their own rights. So, a big call out to every RMIT and Professional Communication students to join us in the next journey of Vietnamese creativity. Let’s make some great works together!”
Story: Ngoc Hoang
