As the saying goes, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. At least that’s the case with B&T’s 30 under 30 people’s Choice Award.

Not content with allowing Thomas Winch from News Corp to take out the People’s Choice title, 2016’s crop of hopefuls have unleashed an avalanche of votes seeing the tally double to nearly 20,000.

Since voting opened, we’ve seen a number of vote-winning tactics employed and the leaderboard continues to bounce around accordingly.

Vote here now.

Since then, the links have been passed through global agency intranets and we’ve been privy to a brilliant mashup on Facebook of People’s choice hopeful Timothy Collier and Yeezy’s Bound 2 video clip with Kim K.

Currently, we have two up-and-comers jostling for first place with only a handful of votes between them.

Celeste Toffanello from M&C Saatchi and Joel Chapman from Give Art Science are neck-and-neck in the lead, having had a sweeping sea of clicks come their way. When B&T checked in with Celeste to make sure she wasn’t employing half of the subcontinent to get behind her cause, she assured us she was a spent force and would be swamped by the end.

As of 9am this morning, the leaderboard stands as:

1. Joel Chapman – Give Art Science
2. Celeste Toffanello – M&C Saatchi
3. Timothy Collier – Society Social
4. Matt Fahd – Ensemble
5. Meagan Gray – News Corp
6. Kane Reiken – Daily Mail Australia
7. Tanya Moore – DT
8. Emma Mumford – Red Guerilla
9. Thomas Winch – News Corp
10. Matthew Devine – News Corp

A massive thank you to our principal sponsor The Newspaper Works and to all our brilliant others for making this event possible. Keep the votes coming and don’t forget to share your dark arts with us.