Media Design School at Straya creative advertising students take top spots at 2025 Student Orcas

After winning 3 out of 4 Grand Finalist places, MDS Creative Advertising students made a clean sweep of the Student Orcas this year by taking out both the winner and runner-up awards.

Says Kate Humphries, programme director at Media Design School: “Congratulations to students Chanel Poomphang & Tea-Maria Riihimaki for winning the Student Orca Award this year for their ‘wild SFX in the clever and cheeky Onosexopoeia’, and Aidan McNeillage & Liza Plyshevsky for coming a close second with the ‘scary, witty and clever Playing You’.

“The Radio challenge, as always, proved to be the surprise medium for the students with art directors falling in love with words, and words falling in love with copywriters.”

“This year, students were assigned two briefs that required them to create a radio first campaign, which would either encourage people to (i) download and listen to Season 3 of  NZ’s hottest Podcast, sex.life, or get them to (ii) download the re-launched rova app to listen to a wide range of audio content made by kiwis for kiwis.  A big thank you to NZME and MediaWorks for the briefs”.

“Congratulations also to our other finalists, Tab Eady and Lola Keys, who made it through two rounds of judging, to record Raunchy Regions for the sex.life brief.  For both Onosexopoeia and Raunchy Regions, the brief was a fun, but also a precariously balanced challenge, in which they had to flirt heavily with the ‘low-hanging fruit of sexual content’ that students are usually advised to avoid at all costs in their portfolios. Chanel, Tea, Tab and Lola clearly managed to avoid that trap with work that took both teams all the way to the Orca Award Lunch.”

Student ORCA judging was based on four criteria: creativity, execution, effectiveness and innovation. The judging panel consisted of Mat Watts (Chemistry),  Kristal Knight (Creative Consultant), and Ashwin Gopal (TBWA).

Of the campaign recorded for Onosexopoeia, the judges commented: “Love everything about these…to know that if you’re someone who hears sex, you’re more likely to listen to the podcast than some innocent soul who doesn’t hear sex. It’s like getting warm leads to the podcast”(Matt Watts); The simplest and strongest message of all the finalists for this brief” (Kristal Knight); “Clever, naughty, and audio-led. Nice work” (Ashwin Gopal).

Says Humphries: “A big thank you to all the judges, as well as The Radio Bureau’s Alistair Jamison and the tireless Fleur Herscott for not only giving the students the opportunity, but also organising the briefs, the judges and the three rounds of judging – but also for the prize money of $700 for the winning team and $350 for the runner up team.

“On the execution front, we owe a grateful shout-out to the all-round-sound-god Milon Williams from Boxcutter for getting in touch to offer his recording space free for a generous afternoon’s recording of three campaigns of 3 scripts each.

“The sound-god certainly had his work cut out for him, with the SFX for Onosexopoeia, with having to convey at the same time, a sexual act,  but also one that retrospectively had to be believable as a far more innocent and innocuous sound. (A huge thanks to creative advertising student Zihao Zeng for her meaty suggestions for the SFX, and her loan of a couple of her tools) .

“The experience with the sound-god Milon paid off when we went on to record the final winning spot with NZME’s ZM Podcast Network, using freelance podcast producer & editor Jaxon Rich, Operations & Partnerships Lead at NZME Phoebe Furley, and the sex.life podcasters themselves: Somatic Sexologist Morgan Penn and award-winning ZM radio host Hayley Sproull.”

Every year, The Communication Council invites students from Media Design School, AUT University and all other tertiary institutions to participate in the Student Axis Awards. The challenge is an open brief which invites students to pick a global brand that’s currently a client of a NZ agency, and come up with a proactive idea that uses new or emerging technology, to express that brand’s purpose in an innovative way.

Like the Student Orcas, the ideas go through two rounds of judging with the Student Axis judges, in which they give feedback to which the students must respond. After the second round, the three grand finalists are announced, who will go forward to the final round of judging by the Axis Executive Judging panel in March 2026 to decide the overall Winner.

Media Design School’s Grand Finalist this year is IwiMoji by Josephine Tahapehi and Alyssa Henderson, about which one of our Industry Panel judges recently commented: “Incredible idea. It goes well beyond any emoji idea I’ve seen.  This would make me love Samsung. It turns Apple’s selling point into a negative. A+++”.

Adds Humphries: “Congratulations to our Creative Advertising students Josephine & Alyssa, and a grateful thank you to the Communication Council and CEO Simon Lendrum for his continued support of the Student Axis, and to Awards Manager, Laura Bunting for organising the brief, the judges, the briefing with the always inspirational Hayden Kerr (Executive Creative Director, Tribal/DDB Aotearoa), and the two rounds of judging.

“Lastly a huge a huge heartfelt thank you to the Student Axis judges for their two rounds of gruelling feedback: Hayden Kerr (Executive Creative Director, Tribal/DDB Aotearoa); Tom Paine (ECD, Pitchblack Partners) Lee Sunter (Executive Creative Director, Saatchi & Saatchi NZ); Melina Fiolitakis (Creative Director, Motion Sickness); Ashwin Gopal (Creative Director, TBWA); and Gaelyn Churchill (Creative Director, DDB Aotearoa).

“And, the ‘MDS Award for Industry Input Above and Beyond’ this year –  goes to Ashwin Gopal for not only being a Student Axis and a Student Orca judge, but also a fantastic mentor to one of our most talented teams this year.”

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