MDS AdSchool students score four out of five spots on the Student Orca shortlist

The Radio Bureau has revealed the finalists for the Student Outstanding Radio Creative Awards (ORCAs) who will now go through to the next round of judging.

This year’s briefs challenged student teams to either come up with a Radio first campaign to encourage Kiwis to use the tools provided by Te Taura Whiri I Te Reo Māori (Māori Language Commission) to learn te reo Māori; to increase foot traffic to a local café or restaurant struggling in the aftermath of lockdowns; or advertise a dating app of their choice.

Says Kate Humphries, programme director from Media Design School: “Currently, In the lead amongst the MDS finalists are Bella Rakete & Courtney Anderson with The Language of Now for the Te Reo brief; followed up by Callum Bately & Alex Erkkila with Brush up on Te Reo ; James Greig & Sam Taunton-Clark with Scary Love for the dating app Hinge; Jonno Entwistle & Alyssa Yeoman for Date for Your Kids for the Plenty of Fish dating app.

“A big thank you to our can’t-believe-they-judged-our-work panel of Simon Vicars ECD Colenso BBDO; Raymond Otene McKay CCO from Run Agency (particularly for your tautoko and guidance around important Kaupapa); and Bex Radford for taking time out to go through so many scripts from MDS and AUT.

“The first round of judging involved scripts, the next round involves the delicate task of  finding the right talent and then recording them, which is even trickier in the case of MDS because we are going to have to do that 4 times over all for zero budget (and, on top of that, one of the scripts demands two child actors). So, dear agencies, if you have in-house recording capacity next week and, maybe even, budding but free voice talent and/or stage mums/dads amongst your staff who may have produced offspring the shape of a girl or boy approximately 6 to seven years ago we’d love to hear from you kate.humphries@mediadesignschool.com.”