• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, June 24, 2015

The winners of the Future Lions, the official student awards at the Cannes Lions Festival were announced today at a ceremony hosted by Rei Inamoto, AKQA Chief Creative Officer. AKQA has led the Future Lions program since its inception in 2005.

This year, more than 1,800 students from a record 60 countries participated in the competition.

The five winning teams are:

• chromebook_type for Google by Elton Rhee, Ludvig Pehrson and Louis Meyer (Miami Ad School, San Francisco and Europe)

• SafeStamp for Heineken International by Divya Seshadri and Meghan D. O’Neill (Miami Ad School, San Francisco)

• UberFIRST-AID for Uber by Andrea Raia, Andrea Zanino, Pierpaolo Bivio and Francesco Sguinzi (Fondazione Accademia di Comunicazione, Italy)

• Snaphelp for Snapchat by Yusol Shim (KyungHee University, Bigant Academy, South Korea)

• Treeprint for World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) by Cheryl Seah Su Yin (LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore)

Berghs School of Communication was named Future Lions “School of the Year” with more shortlisted finalists than any other school. This is the second year in a row that Berghs achieved this benchmark.

“The up-and-coming generation has unprecedented power to shape the future, as this year’s Future Lions winners demonstrate,” said Rei. “These students boldly made their move with ideas that have limitless potential for both brands and the public.”

This year Google partnered with AKQA in putting on the awards. "Future Lions provides a platform for innovative, unexpected ideas by encouraging students to create without boundaries,” said Torsten Schuppe, Director, Brand and Consumer Marketing EMA, Google. “Google is honored to be part of Future Lions, and we’re eager to watch as these winners make their next move.”

The annual Future Lions competition challenges students to connect an audience of their choosing to a product or service from a global brand in a way that wasn’t possible three years ago. There are no rules in terms of media or technology, and no specifics around product, service, or target audience. The 2015 theme, ‘Make Your Move’, encouraged students to think ahead and create ideas that shape the future.

Entries were judged by AKQA’s Future Lions Council and guest judges from Google.