MullenLowe Group to lead Young Lotus Workshop at Adfest 2019

Adfest has announced that MullenLowe Group will host the 2019 Young Lotus Workshop, a two-and-a-half-day workshop for young creative teams from the Asia Pacific and Middle East. 

The Young Lotus Workshop is one of the industry’s longest-running mentoring programmes designed to give the next generation of advertising leaders’ hands-on, practical experience. The programme is open to advertising professionals aged 30 and under, with teams selected by local representatives in markets across the region. 

The first half of the programme consists of talks, mentoring and workshops led by an elite group of MullenLowe Group’s leading creative, as well as strategy, analytics and technology experts. The young creative teams will also receive a real brief for a real client – with just 24 hours to meet the deadline. 

MullenLowe Group’s Asia Pacific CEO, Vincent Digonnet, will be next year’s Young Lotus Chairman, with Leigh Reyes, President and Chief Creative Officer of MullenLowe Philippines, leading a team of mentors from MullenLowe Group offices across the region including Japan, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines. 

Each mentor comes from a distinct specialism across MullenLowe Group – including data science and analytics, experience design and digital strategy – and is designed to challenge each Young Lotus team to use a variety of disciplines and channels to solve the client brief. 

Mentors include:

Vincent Digonnet – CEO, MullenLowe Group APAC

Leigh Reyes – President & Chief Creative Officer, MullenLowe Philippines

Jonny Stark – Chief Strategy Officer, MullenLowe Group APAC

Jonathan Hart – Head of MullenLowe Group APAC’s Data Science and Analytics Centre of Excellence

Mark Haycock – Group Digital Strategy Director, MullenLowe Profero Singapore

Zélia Sakhi – Head of Experience, MullenLowe Profero Japan

Vincent Digonnet commented on the skills that future creative talent needs to bring to the industry, “The next generation of creative talent needs to understand the critical relationship between creative, technology and data in order to produce work which is based on insights and real-world behaviours. This hyper-bundled approach is at the core of what we do at MullenLowe Group and I look forward to sharing these ideas with our Young Lotus teams.” 

“Furthermore, I believe that the best learning experiences don’t happen through simulation. As such, we’re giving our teams real-world briefs, devised with Google, to immerse them in the most realistic and visceral environment, with the winning idea being launched,” he added. 

Reyes said that next year’s Young Lotus participants would learn to take a hyper-bundled approach to solving business problems. “I can’t give the brief away yet, but suffice to say, next year’s teams will broaden their skills by creating multi-disciplinary ideas that involve anything from creative to media, digital, PR, data and social media,” she added. 

Reyes further said, “This is the first time MullenLowe Group has led the Young Lotus Workshop and I can’t wait to mentor next year’s teams. Asia is a powerhouse of innovation so I know they’ll bring amazing ideas to the table – it’s our role to give them powerful strategies for creating ideas that deliver an unfair share of attention.” 

Jimmy Lam, President of Adfest, commented, “We’re so glad to have MullenLowe take on the Young Lotus Workshop next year. It’s one of our longest running and most popular programmes – it is not often young creatives have the chance to accelerate their careers by working hands-on with leaders like Vincent, Leigh and their colleagues across MullenLowe Group.” 

After responding to MullenLowe Group’s brief, the top Young Lotus finalist teams will present their work on stage during Adfest 2019, which runs from Wednesday, March 20 to Saturday, March 23. The winners of both the Young Lotus and the Popular Vote will be revealed at the Adfest 2019 Lotus Awards.