#Loeries2026 | Young Creative, LePub’s Sebastian Dupper: Years of work culminates in one moment
This year’s Loeries Young Creative, Sebastian Dupper, a mid-art director at LePub in Johannesburg, says the award is really special.
“You grow up in this industry knowing those names — seeing their work and thinking, okay, that’s the standard. So to have your name in the same sentence is something really special,” says Dupper.
He adds that the standard at the Loeries is genuinely humbling.
“After seeing the work of my fellow finalists, winning in that company meant something that words will never be able to describe. That moment will stay with me for the rest of my career.”
While that moment will stay with him forever, the journey to it is five years of work in advertising across three different agencies, with different creatives and people he calls the “amazing people who I have the privilege of calling mentors, colleagues and friends”.
Making something from nothing
His love for creativity started much earlier than this, and in an unexpected place.
He grew up on a farm - “I don’t think people expect that when they meet me”.
He says life there was genuinely simple — no screens, no endless entertainment, none of the noise that fills every waking moment today.
“If you wanted to be entertained, you had to find it yourself. Picking up a stick and not seeing a stick — seeing a boat.
“Spending an entire afternoon sailing it down a stream, completely lost in something I’d made from nothing.”
He says, “You had to look harder at ordinary things and find what was interesting about them. And I think that’s exactly what I do now.
“The observation that’s so obvious nobody’s said it out loud yet. The truth that’s been sitting in plain sight the whole time. Growing up on a farm taught me to find something in nothing.”
Not surprising that he is not someone who needs a big, complicated brief to get excited. “I’m actually most energised by the simple, everyday human moments that everyone else walks past.
Learn by getting your hands dirty
He remembers his first-ever conceptual job: Nando’s Make the Table Bigger campaign he worked on at Duke Advertising.
“The senior team brought me in from the start, to be part of the brainstorm, to be in the room. And honestly? I was nervous. Really nervous.”
But when he reflects on it now, that experience gave him something no brief could.
“I got to learn from two of the best creatives I’ve ever worked with — up close, in real time.”
And the thing that stuck with him most wasn’t a creative lesson.
“It was this: when you bring young creatives into the work — not just to observe, but to actually contribute — they learn by getting their hands dirty. And you never know what you’re going to unlock,” he says.
Trust yourself
He says that he would have liked to have trusted his gut earlier in his career.
“When you’re junior, there’s this constant internal negotiation between what you actually think and what you think you’re supposed to think.
“You second-guess the simple idea because it feels too simple. You complicate the honest observation because you think it needs to be smarter.
“And in that process, you sometimes talk yourself out of the best thing in the room.”
He says that, looking back, the moments where the work wasn’t as strong as it could have been are rarely because we didn’t have the right idea.
“It’s because we had it and then kept going, looking for something that felt more impressive.”
Advice to young creatives
His advice to any young creative trying to break in right now is simple:
“Be at a place that is going to allow you to make great work. Work that you are proud of putting in your portfolio.
“And then protect your book. If you’re not making work and adding to your portfolio, you’re not growing.
“Be selfish about it in the best possible way — always look out for your book, always be making something, always be in the room even when you feel like you have no right to be there yet.”
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