War of the Words: Highlights and interviews with the winners

By Sarah Johnson, campaignlive.co.uk, Monday, 12 December 2011 10:25AM

Campaign's debut War of the Words event gave advertising's next generation the chance to pitch their ideas about the future of the industry - watch our video report for highlights and interviews with the winners.

(l-r) host Justin Gibbons, Ashish Pathak, Oliver Deane, Benedict Pringle, Nicola Davies, Tony Jiang

Last Thursday's event was a competition for peple under 30 years of age, with an audience vote and a judging panel of CHI's Johnny Hornby, David Hackworthy, founder of The Red Brick Road and Nikki Crumpton, the chief strategy officer of McCann WorldGroup.

This years winning speakers were Nicola Davies from Cake, AMV BBDO's Benedict Pringle, BMB India's Ashish Pathak and Global Radio's Oliver Deane who won the Planning, Creativity, Brand and Media sessions, respectively.

The overall winner of the day was recent graduate Tony Jiang, who also won The Huffington Post UK's open mic section.

Jiang, who wants to develop a career as a planner, impressed the judging panel and the audience with his argument that advertising focused too much on creating awareness when turning consumers into brand evangelists was a realistic goal.

His three minute presentation - based around his fondness for the film 'Fight Club' and movie storytelling - won the public vote and secured him a trip to New York for two.

This article was first published on campaignlive.co.uk