And the winners of the Student Village Makoya Youth Awards 2011 are…

BlackBerry took home top honours for the Best 360 Degrees Campaign at the Student Village Makoya Youth Awards this year.

The awards – based on research conducted among students – recognise the best youth marketing and career development campaigns on university campuses in South Africa.

Student Village CEO Ronen Aires says the objective of the BlackBerry campaign was to raise awareness around the brand through finding hip hop talent on campus to compete in its Masters of Rhythm 2011 competition. BlackBerry Brand Ambassadors sought out talent across campuses and interactive communications went out via MXit, Facebook and Twitter. “The campaign won the Best 360 Degrees Award for its relevance within the student community, its ‘coolness’ factor and its ability to create demand for BlackBerry products through multiple channels,” he says. Runners-up in the category included Just Juice and Levi’s.

The finalists and winners of the eight categories were based on research done within a pool of 429 undergraduate students across five of the top universities in South Africa. The categories recognised different strengths in campaigns including the ability to make an impression, creative execution and out-of-the-box thinking. The nominees and winners in each category were announced at the Johannesburg Country Club in Woodmead on Friday 28 October 2011.

Unilever was the only brand to win two categories – the Most Aspirational Graduate Recruitment Programme Award and the Best Graduate Recruitment Advert Award, which encompassed graduate recruitment flyers, posters and magazine adverts.

Aires says the company’s print advert – ‘For Want of a Better World’ – positioned Unilever as an environmentally conscientious global brand in the FMCG space, while students ranked its graduate recruitment programme as the one offering the most in terms of career development and training.

The OMG and WTF! awards highlighted a brand’s ability to make an impression and be controversial or provocative.

MTN’s ‘Campus Challenge’ campaign was voted by students as the campaign which stood out the most in the OMG category. The campaign saw 125 pairs of students competing against each other across campuses to complete various tasks.

“Just Juice trialled new flavours on campuses through its ‘Nice Cans’ campaign, which won it the WTF! category for students demonstrating with friends what the flavours were doing inside each can of Just Juice,” says Aires.

Both PPC and Levi’s created a stir on campuses – PPC in the Out of the Box category for using mime artists to promote its Young Concrete Sculptor Awards, and Levi’s for its Curve ID campaign which measured students' body shapes to determine which pair of Levi’s would best suit them. This campaign went viral – which resulted in Levi’s winning the Social Media Star Award.

Lastly, Calvin Klein won the Eye Catcher category for the best creative execution for its CK One Shock campaign, Aires says.

“This year’s winners showed some key trends in youth marketing and career development, including the need to keep campaigns simple and relevant, with instant gratification offered through social media and other channels,” Aires concludes.