NextUp.Monks: Meet 6 of Media.Monks’ Brightest Global Sparks
‘NextUp.Monks’ is an internal competition within Media.Monks aimed at elevating up-and-coming creative talent. Open to employees globally with seven years of experience or less, the winning prize is a trip to Cannes Lions.
2023 marked the competition's second edition with over 300 creatives representing 25 countries competing for gold by answering a creative brief from Meta: ‘VR for Good’. Media.Monks creatives paired up and could compete in a category of their choice: innovation, film or interactive. The creatives had one week to come up with an answer to the brief, and submitted their work through the official Cannes Lions portal, making Media.Monks the first creative company to officially partner with Cannes Young Lions on an internal competition of this nature.
An esteemed jury of internal Media.Monks employees and industry experts reviewed the work in a blind judging process. The work was weighted on the following criteria: 40% The Creative Idea; 20% The Insight and Strategy; 20% The Relevancy to the Brief; and 20% The Execution. The jury selected bronze, silver and gold winners across each of the three categories, with the creative minds behind the gold-winning work earning a ticket to Cannes.
The creative brief, ‘VR for Good’, challenged participants to transform how gen z thinks about VR, showing off how a headset can change minds and transform lives by making a positive impact in areas like medicine, sports training and emergency response.
The gold winners in each category were:
- Interactive Category Gold Winners - Vasyl Ilba, banner producer, Ukraine and Mykyta Zolotoverkhyi, sr. designer, Poland
- Film Category Gold Winners - Ashwin Paul, video editor, Malaysia and Jorene Chew, film & content producer, Malaysia
- Innovation Category Gold Winners and Overall Winners - Anna Zhang, jr. copywriter, US and Yazad Dastur, jr. designer, US
To find out more about their prize-winning ideas and how working on the project has impacted their approach to creativity, LBB chatted with Vasyl, Mykyta, Ashwin, Jorene, Anna and Yazad.
Interactive Winners
Vasyl Ilba, Banner Producer from Ukraine & Mykyta Zolotoverkhyi, Sr. Designer from Poland
Vasyl Ilba is a banner developer. He produces animated programmable banners for over 20 markets for leading global brands BMW and MINI. He had worked as a freelance full-stack web developer before, so Media.Monks is his first 'serious' company. ‘Calm like a river, reliable like the ground, and a magician like a Houdini’ - that's how people describe Vasyl, so he's a serious dude with a magic wand. Asian and Italian cuisines enjoyer.
Mykyta Zolotoverkhyi is a sr. designer. Currently curating a design team in charge of market adaptations for the BMW and MINI client, as well as looking into AI solutions for the SC Johnson family. When he's not wrestling with the intricacies of stable diffusion models, find him sketching out his next trip as he grooves to the quirkiest Spotify playlists. You’re welcome to reach out for some top-notch Ukrainian recommendations.
Give us an overview of your winning idea.
Our concept is titled ‘THE STORY IS YOURS’, and it’s meant to create an accessible opportunity for people around the globe to enjoy VR as a transformative tool. The intention is to connect storytellers and listeners alike through the VR’s ability to raise awareness of socially current topics in new profound ways. The emphasis is on real and striking stories that can be told and experienced with unprecedented nuance, be lifelike or completely out of this world. And leave nobody uninspired.
Walk us through the process in creating your award-winning work.
It all started when Mykyta texted Vasyl on the last date to submit your team for participation. Vasyl didn’t think for long, he was looking for a new experience so the answer was an almost instant YES (considering Vasyl didn’t know much about NextUp.Monks so Mykyta did a quick overview to him).
First day. We are going to receive a brief. We already know that the client is Meta. Zoom call starts. Five minutes in and the theme is… VR! Of course VR. But… what we can do about VR in the Interactive category in a WEEK? Heads empty.
First evening. Vasyl and Mykyta jump into a call. Discussing the theme. Some ideas try to pop in their heads but they are too simple, too complicated, too stupid. Mykyta proposed to create a Figma file. Now all their minds are in the file. You can already see the structure of their minds at that moment. Pure chaos. First evening spent on the ideation, not as productive as expected but some important parts are already there.
Second evening. Catalysation. Both Mykyta and Vasyl are looking at what they did yesterday evening and try to structure it. Suddenly a really cool idea appears in their heads simultaneously. How can you make a piece of content cool, quick, interesting, emotional, and in VR, and also so it doesn’t look like a game? STORIES. And since the category is Interaction - interactive stories. So they start thinking about the format, content, and how to deliver that content. Still the ideation phase. But now the central idea is clear, no headaches, still some doubts but they can’t find flaws. Now they can think about the plan and split the work. Since Mykyta is a designer - he’s doing designs, asset gathering, and deck creation. And since Vasyl is a developer - he’s responsible for texts, QA, and 3D visualisations (this one is new for him, he had never worked with 3D before).
Weekend. Since both Vasyl and Mykyta have a full-time job, they can’t spend much time during workdays. So they can shine on the weekend. So they did. Two full days from 12pm to 12am with pauses just for food and toilet breaks. Pure performance and exhaustion. But the idea drives them. The passion of creating something cool and useful makes them forget about the rest. Mykyta is collecting everything about Meta: from guidelines and colours to presentations and the way they make content. Everything to create a perfect deck and presentation of their idea. In the meantime, Vasyl is creating text descriptions of their idea, rewriting everything dozens of times to make it clear for each and every; and trying to work in Blender for the first time. He must create a few 3D scenes from scratch with no background experience. Pretty challenging job you may suggest. As a result, by Monday morning they had every atom of their project, so now it’s time to make it beautiful.
Over the next days Mykyta was putting everything together in the deck, trying to create something that he likes (he is a man of high standards). A lot of ideas and recreation. But the final product will be perfect. And Vasyl is tweaking his 3D scenes, learning something new with every touch. With texts, he’s also trying to do something that he likes (one more man of high standards). So, he’s moving paragraphs, phrases, even words all across the document, just to create the best description.
Shortlist. Team appeared in the shortlist for the win. Their belief in their idea is high again.
Announcement day. Team was expecting their category to be announced last because it was last everywhere. But not today. Interactive first. Bronze announced - miss. Silver announced - miss. Their belief for the win is zero. And the organisers begin to announce the Gold winner. They hear the phrase ‘This story is yours’ and at that moment they know: the win.
What did you learn about the creative process, particularly working as a creative duo?
1) Creativity is hard
2) Once you have an idea you need to present it, otherwise it’s just an idea
3) Challenges make you better and stronger
4) Having a partner you feel good with is the best feeling ever
5) If you don’t feel productive today, your partner can take some extra work or inspire you to make something great
6) If you share the same ideas and standards with your partner you both can make a banger
How did the NextUp.Monks programme inspire and invigorate you?
This experience was a grand reminder how far healthy confidence, hard work and trusting your instincts can get you. And it’s truly ‘grand’ with regards to how radical the contrast is to our daily lives — it puts you upside down, broadens horizons, lets your naive self loose. And while this journey is transformative on a level that you can feel immediately, it does feel like it’s only the beginning.
Film Winners
Ashwin Paul, video editor & Jorene Chew, film & content producer, a creative duo from Malaysia
Ashwin Paul is a video editor. Prior to his role at Media.Monks, Ashwin worked for Naga DDB Tribal, where he produced multiple videos for brands like Prudential, KFC and Astro. In his spare time, Ashwin likes going for motorcycle touring to enjoy nature, mountains, waterfalls and he also loves playing and watching football.
Jorene Chew is a highly cooperative film and content producer. Prior to joining Media.Monks, she has worked on projects such as Netflix's 'Marco Polo' series and HBO's 'Strike Back' season seven. A determined producer with the motto of 'never give up until you have tried everything', Jorene believes in lifelong learning and approaches each project with the curiosity and eagerness of a child.
Give us an overview of your winning idea.
Our concept was titled ‘The VR Hero’, centred around a core idea: that VR has the power to change the world and your world for the better. The idea plays off our sense of self and identity in the real world as a complement to that in the world of VR, unlocking the limitless potential when these worlds converge.
Walk us through the process in creating your award-winning work.
We thought of having it filmed instead of using stock footage as we are both from the filming industry. We feel that heartwarming storytelling will be able to reach audiences and leave an impression on them. Therefore, we came up with a story that relates to the product, brand and society. The story is quite personal for us as we both have relatives who are suffering from intellectual disability. After some brainstorming sessions, we decided to have the story revolving around a person with a physical disability.
What did you learn about the creative process, particularly working as a creative duo?
One of the main processes that I learned working alongside Jorene was in the post-production process. After ideating, planning. shooting and piecing the film together the outcome of the first draft didn’t look how we expected it to. From there we had to look into minor details on how to tell the story in a way that audiences and judges would understand. That’s where we spent more time crafting our film and making it relevant to the brief. This is the first time we collaborated with each other. The process was smoother than we imagined, we got along well and our direction and motive for the film was aligned. We made some changes to the plot as we were shooting to craft the story better. We continued to change the plot during the editing stage to ensure the audience understood the message we were trying to portray as telling a story within one minute is a challenge.
How did the NextUp.Monks programme inspire and invigorate you?
We are eager to unleash our creativity right from the initial stages of ideation as we primarily belong to the execution department rather than the creative department. We recognise the golden opportunity Nextup.Monks presents for us and we are determined to seize this chance to expand our knowledge of storytelling and produce a piece of work that will truly ignite inspiration among people. This programme also serves as a platform for us to demonstrate our knowledge in the realm of creativity, showcasing our unique abilities and passion for the work.
Innovation & Overall Winners
Anna Zhang, jr. copywriter & Yazad Dastur, jr. designer, a dynamic duo from Los Angeles
Yazad Dastur works on creative ideation for companies looking to make their mark across social media and multicultural spaces. His passion in advertising is to help brands in creating cross-cultural campaigns, sustainable solutions and resonating messages with audiences around the world. A fan of adventure, he is always on the search for a new bar or restaurant and has walked 750 miles around the island of Shikoku in Japan.
Anna Zhang focuses on digital and experiential designs, and has worked with esteemed companies such as Levi’s, Sonos, and Twitter. Raised in sunny Los Angeles, her vibrant and optimistic personality is a reflection of her upbringing. Anna’s design journey commenced at ArtCenter College of Design, where she uncovered her passion for crafting empathetic designs that resonate with users. When she's not immersed in the digital world, Anna embraces tactile activities like solving jigsaw puzzles and cooking. And as a hidden passion, she loves taking hip-hop choreography classes, infusing her life with rhythm and movement.
Give us an overview of your winning idea.
Our idea focused on the passing down of generational recipes through the power of VR. Rooted in shared human experience and the universal love language of food, we wanted to hone in on something really specific and tangible that could be solved through VR and that would unite generations over the shared challenge of, ‘how do we pass down ancestral recipes in today’s world?’
In a way, VR is a new technology that will only advance as time passes by, therefore we didn’t want the idea to feel like a forceful integration. We wanted to solve today’s everyday problems with tomorrow’s technology.
Walk us through the process in creating your award-winning work.
Our process to find our winning insight happened like many other winning ideas: by accident. We both aligned early on that we wanted our idea to be functional and actionable, something that could be made within the next two years as opposed to assuming the future capabilities of technology. Our second principle was that we wanted to focus on a small problem that affected people in their everyday lives as opposed to a large-scale systematic problem that affects society.
The idea itself came upon a chance comment that was made on how we would miss our mother’s cooking after they pass away, as we do not know how they make their dishes. We realised that this was hard to do because our parents were taught to cook using intuition versus younger generations who have learned through social media. Therefore whereas older generations cook through ‘feeling’, we need measured ingredients and step-by-step directions. We immediately bonded over this dilemma and soon discovered that this problem spans cultures, ages and generations and was exactly the type of problem that we were aligned to solve.
What did you learn about the creative process, particularly working as a creative duo?
The biggest takeaway about the creative process was that although the solution may change, the insight needs to remain. After we discovered what we wanted to solve it was no longer ‘why are we trying to do this?’ but rather ‘how?’. That allowed us to get quite crazy with our ideas. Due to the deadline we had to axe quite a few and ended up using a more traditional execution… digital, OOH and social media. However, because the insight resonated with us and others, the idea was easily communicated.
As a creative duo we took the time to understand where the other person was coming from, not just in terms of their work style. We had in-depth talks about our lives to understand what motivated us, what we have in common and where we could learn from each other. Working as a creative duo is more than technical skills, it’s using the best part of each other’s brains and overall just having fun with ideas. I suppose it sounds cheesy, but we really did learn that fun is crucial to this work.
How did the NextUp.Monks programme inspire and invigorate you?
The programme helped us by giving us total creative freedom! It’s a double-edged sword. On one hand it’s a creative’s dream to be told ‘do whatever you want’, but on the other hand you have to have a lot of self-discipline to see what can and cannot be done in the allotted time. Where it invigorated us was being able to get a little wacky, but at the same time have a purpose and goal. Also it brought us together! Now we are friends and can rely on each other for creative and emotional support as we navigate this industry.
Also, we never ever met before this competition. We work at two different parts of the agency: Yazad from Media.Monks and Anna from Jam3.monks. Without this programme, we would’ve never met.
Having the opportunity to go to Cannes and see award-winning work was illuminating and allowed us to see the potential of what creative work can be. It’s like taking a bite of the apple. Once you do it, you can’t go back!
