YoungGuns International Award

Kristian Barnes, Jason Williams, and Michael Kean (CEO of market-leading global creative recruitment firm FBI Recruitment) founded the YoungGuns Award in 2001 from Sydney, Australia with the goal of recognizing and promoting upcoming talent rather than rewarding years of experience. They noted that the reason for starting the award was their frustration that major awards at the time were typically won by well established individuals within the industry.[1]

The YoungGuns Award show introduced a number of innovations in the award category. It was the first international award show focused solely on young and emerging talent, participants had to be under 30 to qualify for entry. It was first international award to produce an advertising campaign for its call of entries (see below). It was the first to offer prizes to the winners, for the YoungGun of the Year it was a cash prize as well as a place on the following years jury, and for the YoungGun Student of the Year it was a work placement with an international agency (Leo Burnett).[2] It was the first to take the winners and finalists work on a travelling exhibition (including Australia, NZ, UK, US, HK, India Singapore, South Africa and Japan).[3] It also introduced 20Guns - a peer voting system where the top voted work would be entered free of charge into the YoungGuns Award [4]

YoungGuns was the first international award to produce an advertising campaign for its call of entries. The campaigns are renowned for being controversial. Most notable include "Peak Early" which focused on child prodigies;[5] "Quit in Style" which allowed anyone to upload content such as videos and feedback to demonstrate how they would quit their jobs;[6][7] 'Worth the Pain' which encouraged creatives to push through to greatness but told them in detail about the effect it would have on their bodies[8] and "Hardly Legal" a porn inspired tribute to creativity.[9] Despite the controversy the yearly campaigns have proven to be quite appealing to the creative industry. Some campaigns have managed to receive recognition in other creative awards such as the One Club[10] New Zealand Grande Axis[11] and Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

The call for entries campaigns are usually created by selective advertising agencies or creative collaborations from all around the world. Some of the past Call for Entry campaign creators included Droga5, The Glue Society, Taxi, Crispin, Porter + Bogusky and Saatchi & Saatchi (New Zealand).

The jury consists of an international panel of over a world class Creative Leader (2014 Jury Chairman announced as Dave Douglas - Partner / ECD of Anomaly Toronto), the best up & coming creative stars from the majority of global advertising agency networks, as well as the previous year's winner - the "YoungGuns of the Year".[1]

• 2001 Guy Shelmerdine and Grant Holland (Cliff Freeman & Partners New York)
• 2002 Antony Nelson (Saatchi & Saatchi London)
• 2003 Trevor Clarence (Terraplane South Africa)
• 2004 Travis Sorge (Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles)
• 2005 Juan Cabral (Fallon London) - most notable for creating and directing Cadbury Dairy Milk's Gorilla (advertisement) in 2007
• 2006 Matt Devine and Luke Crethar (Glue Society Sydney)
• 2007 Jeff Anderson and Isaac Silvergate (TBWA Chiat Day New York)
• 2008 Craig Allen and Eric Kallman (TBWA Chiat Day New York)
• 2009 Michael Canning (Leo Burnett Sydney)
• 2010 Douglas Goh (McCann Erickson Malaysia)
• 2011 Alexander Nowak and Felix Richter (Y&R New York)
• 2012 Rasmus Keger and Morten Halvorsen (R/GA New York)
• 2013 Tarik Abdel-Gawad (Bot & Dolly New York)[12]
• 2014 Laura Jones and Nick Bygraves (Leo Burnett, Toronto)

• 2001 Nick C Tamburri and Lina Yoko Hitomi (Art Centre College of Design, California)
• 2002 Mikael Strom and Yasin Lekorchi (Berghs School of Communication, Sweden)
• 2003 Satoko Takada and Parwin Lawrence (Miami Ad School, USA)
• 2004 Christina de la Cruz, Tom Zukoski and Matt Burgess (Miami Ad School, Minneapolis)
• 2005 Menno Kluin (Miami Ad School Europe, Germany)
• 2006 Eleanor Bullen and Angie Bird (RMIT, Melbourne)
• 2007 Jesse Synder and Rene Delgado (Miami Ad School, Minneapolis)
• 2008 Savina Mokreva, Voldemars Dudums and Mihena Gheorghiu (Miami Ad School Europe, Germany)
• 2009 Duncan Munge, Amadeus Henhapl and Zoe Sys Voglius (Miami Ad School Europe, Germany)
• 2010 Raúl Cosculluela, Nikolai Shorr, Bona Jeong, HyoJoo Kim, Chung Woo Lee and Gue Rim Lee (SVA Unconventional Advertising, New York)
• 2011 Edi Inderbitzin & Maximilian Gebhardt and Maximilian Hoch (Miami Ad School Europe, Germany)
• 2012 Caio Brandao Andrade and Lucas Oliveria (Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing, Brazil)
• 2013 Patrick Tamisiea and Hugo Gstrein (Miami Ad School, Hamburg)
• 2014 Janssen Brothers (Willem de Kooning Academie, The Netherlands)

In 2010 YoungGuns announced the best young individual talent, agencies and advertising schools based on awarded entries from its first 10 years. The YoungGun of the Decade was Jeff Anderson (Goodby Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco),[13] the YoungGun Agency of the Decade was BBDO [14] and the Advertising School of the Decade was Miami Ad School, Europe.[15]