Their prize includes a cash reward, a three-month paid internship with Brand Union Cape Town, as well as the handcrafted Brain-on-Brain (BOB) trophy that will be presented at the Vega graduation ceremony early next year.

Brand Union started The Creative Union Awards with Vega in 2013, when they noticed a gap in the awards sector that celebrates the collaboration of creatives and strategists working closely together. It’s about breaking down the perceptions that the two disciplines need to live apart from each other as separate phases of a job, and rather fusing them together.

Each year, a new theme is created to remind students about the importance of collaboration, but also to allow their studio to have a bit of fun. This year’s theme was “Merge. Morph. Master.” – a play on the idea of creating a strategic-creative idea monster, with a visual language inspired by the Little House of Horrors.

This year, the students were briefed by Brand Union, to create a through-the-line campaign for Castle Lite, which is not only served extra cold but lagered extra cold too.

The students needed to create a campaign that would educate consumers on the benefit of lagering extra cold, as well as to educate them about the lagering process itself.

“We were impressed with the high standard of work shown by all students. The strongest teams built their campaigns on consumer insights that showed they understood the challenges of talking about the product intrinsic to a group of consumers who are primarily buying for other reasons. They used these insights to really bring the product story and benefit to life in a way that kept the product at the heart of their idea, and developed solutions with strong PR potential. At the end of the day, it was a difficult call between two strong teams. The winning team presented well and demonstrated the best integration of creativity and strategy,” says Mathew Weiss, MD of Brand Union Cape Town.

The winning team created #VocabYourLager – creating fresh and personalised meaning behind the lagering terminology, making it more engaging and easier to understand. They also linked with key celebrities to bring Castle Lite’s music affiliation to the forefront.

The collaboration between strategy and creativity is emphasized strongly in Vega’s curriculum, and provides an opportunity for Brand Union to support talent development in the South African marketing and advertising industry. As such, the Creative Union Awards brief was included as an official assignment at Vega in 2014.

“Best of breed collaborations with industry thought-leaders like Brand Union and innovative brands like Castle Lite sits at the heart of Vega. We promise our students applied learning through real-life industry challenges and this project is testament to this philosophy. The Creative Union Awards has been growing from strength to strength annually and it is a pleasure working with the professional and passionate Brand Union team and we are looking forward to our 2016 collaboration with our Cape Town and Johannesburg campuses,” says Thys De Beer, student navigator at Vega, Cape Town.

For more information, visit www.vegaschool.com. Alternatively, connect with them on Facebook or on Twitter.