A select group of young professionals will have a chance to hob nob with industry execs, and compete on a global stage as winners of this year’s Globe and Mail Young Lions competition.

The Globe and Mail has announced the winners of the 2016 Young Lions and Young Marketers competitions at the CMDC’s annual conference.

The publisher, which is Canada’s official representative for the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, announced the winners from a list of finalists announced last week; winners for each category were selected by a panel of judges. Some 359 entries were registered for the competition across these five categories: Print, Film, Cyber, Media and Marketing.

All projects for this year’s competition were created for the David Suzuki Foundation’s Blue Dot movement. The goal was to target parents, teachers and caregivers, and get them to bring kids outside more often so they can learn more about the planet.

Taking the Media category are Catherine Dorion and Jacob Guite-St-Pierre of DentsuBos (pictured, right), who were tasked with a Suzuki Superhero Challenge. The two came up with the idea of a life-sized game, in which adults are connected to children through a synchronization between a smart watch and an app. On completion of each mission, the child earns a badge. The focus of the game was to introduce children to nature rather than the app, with the latter acting as the device through which to achieve that connection.

Joshua Lessard and Lian Benoit of Sid Lee were the winners in the Print category. Jess Toye of BBDO and Kaidy Wong of Zulu Alpha Kilo have won in the Cyber category, while Julia Milstone-Turner and Samuel Sferrazza of Route Eleven won first place for their idea in the Film category. Meanwhile, Christian Di Vincenzo and Olena Sapojnikova of Lexus Canada won the Young Marketers competition.

The winners will be Canada’s representatives at the global Young Lions competition held in Cannes this June.

Image: Catherine Dorion and Jacob Guite-St-Pierre of DentsuBos picking up their Media award from Cathy Collier, CEO, OMD Canada