Where next for Student Design?

The meeting was initiated by the Hungarian POPAI organisation after it was shocked to learn the Student Design category has been removed from the national winner categories of Shop! Global Awards.

The Hungarian way

Ildikó Kátai, general secretary of POPAI was the first presenter at the meeting, talking about the Hungarian situation. Her guest was Réka Nagy, customer marketing manager of Essity, who gave an insight into the perspectives, opportunities and challenges on the brand side. It was the Zewa brand that launched the first student design competition in 2018, in cooperation with the Budapest University of Technology. Following Zewa PICK, Heineken and this year Coca-Cola HBC were the theme sponsors for the POP tools to be designed.

Czech and English traditions

Petr Simek, president of the Czech and Slovak POPAI organisation told: for 19 years they have organised student competition in campaign, 2D and 3D categories for secondary and higher education students. Phil Day and Martin Kindom, the country manager and the director general of POPAI UK&Ireland confirmed that the hope of getting a good job is the main motivation for the student contestants. Leo van de Polder, Shop! Association’s global development director pointed out that currently 9 organisations – Brazil, Czech Republic, France, Japan, East Asia, Hungary, Russia, UK&Ireland, USA – have a student competition and there are plans to launch in Germany and Australia. At the end of the meeting the working group decided to prepare a strategic summary and a draft scenario, to help the hesitant organisations to get involved in the student competition movement.