Media Design School students win Student Newspaper Awards and a fistful of Crowbars

It’s been a big week for AdSchool students at Media Design School. On Monday the students had picked up five Crowbars at the International Crowbar Student awards, including the top awarded copywriting one, for a campaign for Gnosh Supermarkets by students Sian Henderson and Tania Menzies (that picked up on the emerging phenomenon of posh female shoplifters identified by the global retail consultants).

At last night’s Newspaper Ad of the Year awards MDS students, for the 5th year running, took out both the main student competition and the topical prize. The aforementioned Tania Menzies (right), together with Julie Koch (left), won the main competition with their Instant Reads campaign for Nescafe Azera, that made ‘Instant a little more special’ by gathering all the Herald’s instant reads into the one spot together with a space reserved for your cup of Nescafe Azera.

The same team also took out a highly commended for a campaign that featured an apology from the Herald (together with a voucher for Nescafe Azera instant coffee) for mistakes in the paper made by staff who had swanned out to get themselves a barista coffee. MDS students, Tom Houghton (left) and another aforementioned, Sian Henderson (right) also took out a second place win for an entire takeover of the Herald letters page. In another double-up of wins, Kent Briggs (below, left) and Nick Houghton (below, right) not only took out a highly commended for their topical ad, they also got a second trot up to the stage (and a huge hug from Samantha Hayes for Kent) to collect the overall student topical winner.

Media Design School says a big thanks to News Works for organaizing the competition as well as a great night, and a huge congratulations to all of its Crowbar winners Shakthi Ramachandran, Kristi Tansilia, Gair Harrison-McCulloch and, of course those aforementioneds, Koch, Menzies and Henderson.