James Hilton on the Future Lions

Yesterday in the Palais saw the eighth annual Future Lions competition reward the five best pieces of technological thinking from the creative stars of the future.

The five winning entries included two from the USA, and one each from Japan, Germany and the UK. Among them was The Editorialist, an idea to bring together a variety of content from Conde Nast publications in one app from Alexander Norling and Sara Uhelski of the Miami Ad School San Francisco. There was also The Pebble, Sense Danger, from Thomas Bender and Thomas Corcoran of School of Communication Arts 2.0 in the UK, an idea that utilises the Pebble watch's internet capabilities to warn deaf people about dangerous situations, like fires and break-ins, they may otherwise be unaware of with a traditional alarm warning.

You can see all five idea and their respective case studies at futurelions.com or at the Future Lions Facebook page, while below, AKQA co-founder and CCO discusses the competition and why it's so important.

This is the eighth year of the Future Lions; what drove AKQA to introduce the competition in the first instance?

We saw that whilst young people were represented on the global stage, students weren’t. School is really the last place you can fail with impunity, and because of this, thinking is truly free and able to explore all possibilities without the constraints – real or perceived – that seem to take hold of people in the working world.

Has the competition altered at all since its inception?

Only in size. But the brief has always remained the same: ‘Connect a brand to an audience in a way that was not possible five years ago.’ That’s it. No rules. No entry fee. No constraints. As long as the idea submitted is practically possible, then it has a chance at winning a Future Lion.

Have the entries each year increased alongside the popularity of the competition and how many did you get this year?

The reaction we get to the launch of a new Future Lions competition is always amazing. In terms of numbers, the first year was very modest, but still enough to show us that we had hit upon a very rich vein of creativity. Every single year the number of entries has increased by the hundreds, with more schools and universities taking part, across many more countries. Every year has always been our most successful one, and this year didn't disappoint.

What are you looking for in a winning entry?

Simply; fresh thinking. A Future Lion will combine technology and creativity in an effortless way, to reduce the pain points, or just the clutter, within people's lives. In every award under the sun the juries always say: ‘We want to be surprised!’, but the irony is that most of the time they aren’t. They see the same stuff again and again. I think this is because most people love a process – something worked once, so they use the same thinking again. Students don’t have that affliction. They haven’t replaced their passion with process. Hopefully, programmes like Future Lions inoculates them forever.

How difficult is the judging process usually?

It’s actually pretty straightforward. The first-round jury is made up of a cross-section of AKQA craft disciplines: creative, strategy, technology, R+D. It used to be that we asked people from the agency if they would like to judge - now we have a waiting list, such is the excitement surrounding the competition.

As soon as the first-round jury has compiled a shortlist it is given to AKQA’s creative council and special guest judges to get it down to the winning five. We all know exactly what we’re looking for, what is possible and what is just magic, so our winners are always clear to us. I suppose, unlike a few juries I’ve been on, it’s not a battle of egos, we just want to find the best work and reward the student teams with a money-can’t-buy experience.

Have any of the entries been taken up by the clients they were made for?

Yes. Winners from last year had produced an amazing idea for a surf clothing brand that involved powering the manufacture of a particular clothing line through electricity generated by wave motion. It was totally on-brand and the client was so impressed that the team responsible was invited to take it further.

And when I said earlier about Future Lions being a money-can’t-buy experience, I really mean it. Putting these students and their work in the spotlight at Cannes, in front of the world’s most creative agencies, and then seeing the scrum of recruiters literally pushing business cards into the students’ hands as they walk off stage is as humbling as it is inspiring. Winning a Future Lion literally attached a rocket to their careers. Every single person who’s ever won a Future Lion is now working for a top five agency. Well, everyone bar one. She decided she wanted to work in a zoo.

Why do you think it’s important that Future Lions exists?

To show students and the world that there is another way of solving problems that isn’t 30 seconds long. And that brands can bring real benefit to people by providing them with services and experiences that contribute to and enrich their lives. Future Lions is the redefinition of advertising.