Brussels 22 May 2008:- An advertising campaign by four Spanish students, which encourages young people to become more European by travel and interaction with their peers in other cultures, has won the first AD VENTURE student competition organized by EACA through its European Foundation for Commercial Communications Education.

The “D-Shine” team from the University Cardenal Herrera CEU in Valencia, Cristina Real, Laura Artal, Daniel Lozano and Pablo Martín, beat over 40 other teams from 11 countries to win first place, answering a brief to create a campaign to communicate the EU to its citizens.

The three highest-scoring teams from the initial online judging round were invited to present their campaigns to the second round jury and delegates during the EFCCE Annual Conference on the 16th of May at the Ecole Supérieure de Publicité in Paris.  

The second round jury comprised Hervé Brossard, Vice-Chairman of DDB Worldwide & AACC President,  Nikklas Frings Rupp, Managing Director of the Miami Ad School Europe, Jean-Claude Hamilius, Senior Lecturer of the Hochschule Mannheim in Germany, Frances Illingworth, Global Recruitment Director of the WPP Group, Marc Tacquet-Graziani from the Directorate General Communication of the European Commission, Helga Van den Bulck, Lecturer at the Plantijnhogeschool Antwerpen and Roderick White, Editor of Admap.

The winning campaign, “The Europe Experience”, was chosen by the jury because the creative strategy successfully blended a humorous approach with the emotion of young people “living Europe” rather than “living in Europe”, rather than the more conventional approach of communicating the political and social aspects of the European Union.

In recognition of their achievement, the Spanish team will attend the student programme of the International Advertising Festival in Cannes in June and will have the opportunity to present their campaign to the audience of senior agency & client management at the Euro Effies Gala on September 17 in Brussels.