The
festival is organized by the Business Advertising Association in collaboration
with the Catalan government and the Universitat
Internacional de Catalunya (UIC), and is sponsored by Zenith and
Renfe. The advertising marathon will be held on the UIC Barcelona Campus and
will be open to the public. Entry will be free of charge. This latest edition
of the awards will consolidate the Business Advertising Association’s long
history of hard work and dedication to creating links between the academic and
the business worlds.

During
the festival, the Drac Novell Awards will be
presented to students and recent graduates of universities and teaching
institutions that specialize in international advertising and business
communication. The competition is open in terms of subject matter and the
topics will be divided into six main categories, which will include cinema,
television, radio, print media, posters and interactive media, in addition to
the special audience awards, the Zenith award for media creativity and the
Creativity 24 award, where participants have just 24 hours to complete their
entries following a briefing by the organization two days before the festival.
This year, for the first time, Complot Creativity School will award one
of the winners of the television, radio, print media or poster categories with a
one-year scholarship to its training programme. The terms and conditions of the
competition can be consulted on the Business Advertising
Association website.

The
jury will be made up of creative advertising professionals in active service
and will be chaired by Josep María Ferrara, the
president and creative director of the Pavlov advertising agency.

The
festival will include a programme of conferences, roundtable sessions and
workshops featuring prestigious professionals in the field of advertising and
communication. The programme will also feature personalized “speed portfolio”
sessions, which will give students the opportunity to have their portfolios in
various disciplines evaluated by an active professional. Together, all of these
events will help create a meeting point between the academic and business worlds,
and a discussion forum on new challenges in the industry.

The
Drac Novell Festival is unique in its field, since
it is organized by students from the host university, and it will be hosted by
the UIC for the second year running. A total of five work committees made up of
35 volunteer students from the UIC are now working alongside the Business
Advertising Association to coordinate various aspects of the event. This year's
logo and corporate image have been selected as part of a competition held among
UIC students. The winner was Óscar Armengol, a
third-year Advertising and Public Relations student in the Faculty of
Communication Sciences.