Shooting Stars make a pitch for Yahoo’s brief: Hunt on for talent under 30

After its Big Idea Chair, Yahoo Has embarked on another property, this one for creatives under 30 years and initiated by production house Flying Saucer. ‘Shooting Stars’, a contest for creatives involving a brief from Yahoo, has been receiving entries since 1 January 2013. One selected script will be produced by Flying Saucer, and the work would be sent to the Cannes International Festival of Creativity, informed organisers.

The objective is to provide younger creatives, who don’t get the same opportunities as their senior counterparts, an opportunity to showcase their talent. ‘Shooting  Star’ is also billed as a platform for people from any line of business but keen on writing.

Pushpendra Misra, founder-director, Flying Saucer, Mumbai, said “We were keen on exploring talent. Hence I approached Yahoo as they have been promoting creativity for a while now. They already have a property called the Big Idea Chair and we at Flying Saucer believe that there are no limits to creativity. This competition is a forum to encourage young creatives and provide them a platform where they can freely express themselves.”

The last date for submission of entries is 31 January 2013. The winner of the competition will be announced on 15 February by a jury that comprises of Nitin Mathur, senior director and head - marketing, India and SE Asia, Yahoo; Malvika Mehra, NCD and senior VP, Grey Worldwide; Sonali Bhatia, head of design, Flying Saucer; and Pushpendra Misra, founder-director, Flying Saucer.

Organisers are hopeful that the initiative will discourage people from making ads for non-existing brands (or brands which might agree to release the ad just once), for the sake of entering award shows. 

Nitin Mathur, explained that the rationale for associating with the property goes beyond encouraging the creative fraternity. He said, “For us, Shooting Star is also a platform to share our real life problems in briefs. Hence we are always looking out for good ideas and in this case we are saying that we have real life problems which we have converted into a brief. So we thought of partnering for Shooting Stars so that we can get younger creatives to generate ideas. And these ideas are linked back to our business and our objective of communicating with our users. The best part is that we do not have to take the regular route of going to an agency and telling them what we want. We can simply explore talent and creativity through ‘Shooting Star’. The people who are below 30 are themselves consumers and hence they understand the space much better. They have their own opinion and they are bubbling with ideas.”

The Yahoo view is that digital is still at 4 to 5 per cent of overall marketing spends - and being an experimental medium, is moving slow. “Industry biggies like Yahoo have the onus to explain to people the advantages of digital. They need not replace other media; they just need to create space for themselves and initiatives like ‘Shooting Star’ can be expected to actually make a difference for the industry and the medium as well,” surmised Mathur.