AWARD School
AWARD School is the Advertising Council Australia’s course for aspiring creatives. Briefs run weekly across formats, and each week the strongest responses go up on the wall. These five made it, and the portfolio placed second in Queensland in 2025.
Standard Procedure
Brief 1: Outdoor. A single static billboard.
The challenge. Standard Procedure is an SPF 50+ chemical-filter sunscreen built around how it sits on skin. The insight was that people skip sunscreen not because they doubt it works, but because they don’t like the way it feels. A billboard gives you one image and one line to carry a proposition about Australian conditions.
The idea. The execution strips it back to the product alone on black, the brand’s sun device reading as a squint against the glare, under the line “Protection for Australian Conditions”.
Elixir
Brief 2: Print. A campaign of three connected ads.
The challenge. Elixir is a zero-alcohol social drink that produces a genuine buzz through nootropics rather than alcohol. The proposition was all upside, no downside, but the idea had to work three times over and still read as one campaign.
The idea. Three settings where alcohol is off the table, and the drinking happens anyway: a baby shower, an AA meeting, a convent. “All Buzz. Zero Alcohol.” The joke carries the product truth: it was never the buzz people needed to give up.
Toyota HiLux
Brief 3: Film. A 30-second TVC.
The challenge. The HiLux is already a cultural symbol of reliability, and the proposition was Australia’s most trusted ute. The problem is that every ute claims toughness, and trust is an abstraction until something is at stake.
The idea. Two campers sit in the shade on a hot afternoon. The camera pulls back to reveal the shade is a boulder suspended above them, held by a HiLux parked on the clifftop. “Ahhh… bloody serene.” Trust demonstrated rather than asserted.
Aldi Special Buys
Brief 4: Audio. A 30-second radio spot.
The challenge. Special Buys works because of its randomness: electronics next to gardening supplies next to wetsuits. The proposition was things you need but didn’t know you wanted, and radio had to carry it on sound alone.
The idea. “BEEPin’ Special” puts an increasingly excited father at the checkout, where the scanner’s beep doubles as a censor bleep. The pun escalates with the absurdity of the range and lands on a plasma cutter. It runs on a sound the medium already owns.
Lucent Globe
Brief 6: PR. An idea that provokes action.
The challenge. Lucent Globe makes plant-derived laundry sheets, and the barrier was belief: people assume chemicals clean better than natural products. A PR idea needed a cultural hook and something people would actually talk about.
The idea. The Trojan Truth. Launch a bold, chemical-looking fake detergent called TROYON and send it to reviewers and influencers for a 30-day trial with no mention of Lucent Globe. Once the glowing reviews are in, reveal it was the natural formula all along, proving the point using the bias against it.