Culture

Lincoln Creative Advertising students win The Shelf


Congratulations to level three creative team Charley Gray and James Hobbs on winning top prize in this year's Shelf Awards.

Praise also goes out to Neil Ritson and Stefan van Zoggel who came second.

This is a great achievement by Lincoln's Creative Advertising students who were up against some very stiff competition from the top advertising students in the country. Charley and James said of the evening, “The Shelf Awards was a fantastic opportunity for us to meet some really amazing people. It has opened lots of doors for us and we are really grateful for that. Here's to another 10 years!”

Charley and James collecting top prize: an oak veneer shelf on which to place their future awards.

The Shelf Awards (as featured in Campaign) are unique in the way the competition is run: there is no set brief - instead the students portfolio's are judged as a whole by an assembled audience of 200 people from across the advertising industry, including Steve Stretton, creative partner Archibald Ingall Stretton, Barney Cockerell, executive creative director, Rapp and Mike Cavers, executive creative director, The Marketing Store.

This was the 10th anniversary of the Shelf Awards so it was particularly satisfying to win such a milestone event. The event was held at Getty Images Gallery in central London.

Gary Sharpen who runs the awards said: "What swung it for Charley and James was that they had a real strategic insight to their work. Then it was executed in an eye-catching and highly relevant way. They were very integrated in their media thinking and you could also run a lot of their campaigns tomorrow."

He added that he was "pleasantly surprised" at the high standard of copywriting in the entries. "Fewer and fewer students know how to write well, so when it happens, it's great."

The competition was the closest fought yet with Neil Ritson and Stefan van Zogel also from Lincoln University coming a close second. They said, “It was a brilliant event. We would advise any student to get involved if they can – The Shelf is such a good opportunity.”