The IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising), has launched a competition for teenagers in state schools taking part in the industry’s nationwide careers open day, Advertising Unlocked, to create a real-world ad campaign that will roll out on Snapchat early next year, with the social platform donating the media space. The children will be given the opportunity to devise a social-cause ad campaign to address the problem of littering in the UK.

The competition embodies and expands upon the aim of the Advertising Unlocked initiative, founded by IPA President Julian Douglas in 2017, to ignite awareness and passion for a potential career within the world of advertising. Concurrently, the initiative provides agencies with an audience of fresh and diverse talent. This year, Advertising Unlocked will see around 2,000 state school children aged 13 to 18 years old attending 75 agencies throughout November. Each agency taking part in Advertising Unlocked has been matched with a registered school based on location and requirements. 60 per cent are located in London, and 40 around around the UK, including Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Brighton and Manchester.

The brief for the competition is for the ad industry to tackle the environmental issue of litter-dropping in the UK, which is on the rise post-lockdown, and ties into Douglas’ IPA presidential THINK 10X agenda to demonstrate the power of advertising and creative solutions to help solve society’s problems. The winning work will be chosen by a panel of industry experts and will roll out on Snapchat in 2023.

“Thanks to this incredible opportunity from Snapchat, we will be able to further spark these school children’s creativity and hopefully enthusiasm for a future career in our business, whilst simultaneously helping to solve a societal problem,” said Douglas. “This is more than just an exercise; the kids will be able to work on a real-life brief, tackling a real-world problem, and will see it rolled out in real-life across a dynamic platform. Given Snap’s core 13-18-year-old user base, they make the ideal media partner for this project. I commend all those agencies opening their doors to school children as part of Advertising Unlocked and send my best of luck to all the children taking part in this competition.”