A financial awareness campaign called ‘Dodge the Debt Trap’ has secured a gold DMA Breakthrough Award for two Edinburgh Napier University students.
Gemma Rundell Skelding and James Gadsby were awarded the win at the DMA Awards – which took place last week – with a campaign that was described as “engaging, innovative, and strategic”.
One of the most prestigious awards for young talent entering the marketing industry, the DMA Breakthrough Award, run in partnership with Barclays, gives aspiring creatives the chance to work on a live creative brief for a real client or business.
For 2023’s challenge, UK students were asked to develop a multi-channel marketing campaign to change Gen Z’s negative perceptions of credit cards and get them using Barclaycard instead of BNPL brands such as Karna and ClearPay.
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Dozens of budding creatives across the UK responded to the brief, but the winning team presented a concept “worthy of an experienced creative team with a well-defined strategy”.
Students from Leeds Arts University, Lucy Henning and Lucy Gibbons, took the silver award with their ‘Know your Limits’ campaign, while Scott Clarke, Tim Hutchings and Freya Rowley from the University of Gloucestershire, won the bronze award for their ‘Barclaycard Enchanted’ campaign.
DMA Talent general manager Kate Burnett said: “We are incredibly grateful for the increasing level of interest and engagement that we receive each year in the Breakthrough Award, from budding marketing talent across the UK.
“These types of initiatives are important for helping to ensure our industry is as inclusive as possible – we want everyone who is passionate about data-driven marketing to be able to showcase their skillsets and enthusiasm to learn.”
Matt Conner at Barclays UK added: “We were incredibly impressed with the calibre of the pitches and the range of ideas the teams brought to us – it was unbelievably difficult to decide between the four shortlisted campaigns.”
