In early September, the Pakistan Advertisers Society (PAS) in collaboration with the Pakistan Advertising Association (PAA) and the Jang Media Group, organised the Young Spikes Digital Competition in Karachi for advertising professionals aged 30 and under. The two-day competition challenged participants to create an integrated social media campaign within 24 hours and present it in 10 minutes to a panel of judges from the advertising industry, followed by a Q&A session. The panel included Fawaz Ahmed (Ismail Industries), Zohaib Ayaz (Prestige Advertising), Emaad Ishaque Khan (Synite Digital), Amna Khatib (Group M), Kiran Murad (former ECD MullenLowe Rauf & creative freelancer) and Usman Qaiser (Jubilee Life Insurance).

This year, 26 teams from different companies participated by presenting solutions to a brief set by Jubilee Life Insurance (the competition’s official sponsor), which asked participants to create a social media campaign aimed at promoting the company’s various insurance offerings – health, education, wedding and savings.

The winners were Haleema Ahmed (Digital Team Leader) and Romaan Naeem (Content Manager) from MullenLowe Rauf, who were rewarded with an all-expense-paid trip to represent Pakistan at the international Young Spikes Digital Competition in Singapore, which will be held this week and where they will have to face a similar competition, but this time on an international level.

According to the PAS press release, “Team MullenLowe Rauf provided the most innovative solution using technological advancement and demonstrated the power of social media when answering the competition brief.”

Ahmed and Naeem for their part said that as this was the first time either of them had participated in such a competition, they were very surprised to hear their team’s name announced. When asked how they felt about competing on an international level, their reply was: “If we can beat such brilliant teams in Pakistan, we believe we have a pretty good shot in Singapore.”