DCU students win alcohol awareness competition

Two DCU Multimedia students have won the annual DARE2BDRINKAWARE.ie competition - organised by drinkaware.ie - which challenges third-level students to develop creative campaigns that highlight responsible drinking.   

Sam Pearson and Aisling Sinclair carried off the Gold Award for their campaign, ‘No Sleep Lost – Don’t Lose Sleep over Where You’ll Wake Up’ which reached an audience of over 165 000 on Facebook and included a number of elements including a website, interactive drinks calculator, animation piece and viral video which focussed on the real-life consequences arising from excessive alcohol consumption.  They also mounted an extensive marketing and PR campaign to support the project which resulted in significant coverage across the media in recent months.

Seven teams were shortlisted in the competition, and received up to €2,000 each to implement their proposed campaigns.  The shortlisted teams were then invited to pitch their campaigns to a high-profile judging panel at a Dragons’ Den-style final at Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin. The judges included: Founder and CEO of JOE.ie and Her.ie, Niall McGarry; Head of Media for UK & Ireland at PR Slides, and owner of The Savvy Shopper blog, Sinead Van Kampen; and Publishing Director of Hot Press, Duan Stokes.

Speaking at the ceremony, CEO of drinkaware.ie, Fionnuala Sheehan said,

“The standard of entries to the 2014 DARE2BDRINKAWARE.ie competition was extremely high, and selecting a winner was no easy task for the judging panel.  Each of our judges is an extremely high achiever in their field, and all are well able to recognise high standards in creativity and innovation.  They were very impressed with the level of the entries for the competition.  Having people of such calibre on board as judges also presented a unique opportunity for the shortlisted students to engage with industry leaders and get valuable feedback on their work that they can apply directly to their own careers over the coming years.

“The idea behind this year’s competition was to empower students to create campaigns that raised awareness of the importance of responsible attitudes to drinking and engaged their peers. By enabling young people to create awareness-raising campaigns by students for students, the campaigns that have been rolled out over the past few months have not only been more creative than ever, they have also resonated on a different level with their target audience.”