In June 2022, we joined forces for the first time at The Leith Agency.

In June 2023, we won a Cannes Young Lions Gold.

We’re still trying to figure out how we pulled it off.

Joe, an art director, is a Mancunian with a background in design. Marion, a copywriter, is a Singaporean with a fine art background. Our skills seem complementary, and our relaxed temperaments seem to suit the chaos of advertising.

We are restless creatives – we always have an extra project or two up our sleeves. So it was a welcome challenge when we were encouraged to enter the UK Young Lions Competition.

Print ads take a certain level of craft, clarity, and storytelling to get right. Where does your eye travel? How complete does the image have to be? How quickly is the message received? Print seemed to be our forte and we didn’t realise it at the time.

Of 250 entries, we were amazingly chosen as one of the winners. And before we knew it, we were on the train to Cannes.

We don’t take ourselves too seriously and rarely pat ourselves on the back. But we made an exception with that win – not every creative gets to go to the festival of creativity.

The competition

It was our first time in Cannes, but we didn’t have a moment to take it in. The Global Young Lions Print Competition kicked off on the very first day and we were immediately put to work.

We had 24 hours to answer a brief set by a sustainable forestry company called EcoTree and were up against 32 other countries.

EcoTree struggled to explain its business proposition succinctly, so the task was to do it in a single print ad.

We read the brief carefully, between the lines, trying to get to the root (ha!) of what made them unique.

We settled on a strategy early, which was to put their financial model front and centre of our print ad.

After tests, sketches and avoiding every money-tree cliché we could, we came across a beautiful image of a cross-section of a tree.

We felt compelled to use it but didn’t know why or how. So we did the logical thing – we slept on it.

In the morning, it clicked that tree rings were the perfect metaphor for the passage of time. It was data visualisation at its most natural. As a tree grows, so does the tree owner’s profit.

Simple. We cracked it.

We explored other ideas but kept returning to the same one.

We questioned if it was creative enough but kept circling back.

So we went for our gut, spent a generous amount of time crafting it and clicked submit. 

A rewarding week 

The competition was over – we could finally relax and enjoy the rest of the festival.

We attended numerous talks, soaked up the atmosphere and saw as much work as possible. We were incredibly inspired and hoped that one day, our work would make it to Cannes, and we would share the stage with the best in our industry.

We didn’t expect that day to be Friday.

When they announced that we had won, we couldn’t believe it. We scrambled to get our certificates, gave an interview, phoned our families and colleagues, and had a quick celebratory McDonald’s before rushing to the awards ceremony.

The imposter syndrome kicked in when Spike Lee walked past us and got on stage. The night awarded Titanium Lions, Glass Lions, and Film Lions, to name a few – the kind of awards you spend a career chasing.

We got up on stage to receive our award from David Droga, with our 24-hour print ad displayed for the entire auditorium to see. It was a surreal experience, and hopefully not our last.

Back to normality 

It still hasn’t sunk in that we have won one of the most prestigious advertising awards of our age group. The Young Lions Competition is an incredible opportunity that could change the trajectory of any young creative’s career. We are very proud and excited to see where this win takes us.

We especially appreciate how the Advertising Association in the UK conducted our local competition, as it was free to enter, giving everyone a fair chance. We’d love to see more inclusive opportunities like this in our industry.

The prize for winning is a ticket to next year’s festival, we already can’t wait, and will be cheering on the next batch of UK Young Lions.