Today the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity announced the winners of the fifth and final Cannes Chimera Challenge.
This year, the brief for the Cannes Chimera Competition calls for the development of a one-time brand activation that will attract massive public attention to the growing Global Citizen platform, and result in a surge of sign ups to the campaign, through email capture and Facebook.
This year, the brief for the competition called for the development of a one-off brand activation that would create a surge in public awareness of Global Citizen, a new mobilizing platform aimed at engaging a massive public audience in global health and development issues. Supported by major NGOs in the development space as well as a diverse group of corporate partners, the platform provides new ways for people to learn about and follow global issues they care about, and take action.
The winning ideas from the most recent competition came from agencies in Vietnam, UK and Singapore:
‘Sign Up Is Power’ by DDB Singapore plans to build booths around towns in the UK, US, France, Germany, Canada and Australia that will allow people to sign up to support Global Citizen whilst absorbing their body heat. This heat will then be converted into electricity for communities in need to show that even small acts can make a real difference.
Sapient Nitro UK’s ‘We Are Close’ is a Facebook quiz that shows users the probable migration path of their ancestors, demonstrating that we are all more connected than we think to people living in extreme poverty today.
‘Global Impact Predictor’ by OgilvyOne Worldwide Vietnam is an idea for an app that visualises the influence a user can have through their social media networks and brings understanding of their potential global impact.
Commenting on the winners, Lions Festivals CEO Philip Thomas said, “It’s been a privilege to help harness the creative power of our community for a project with the ambition of turning 30 million people into Global Citizens, willing to take micro actions to help people in the world’s poorest countries. Our loyal panel of Cannes Chimera have dutifully gone through all submission to pick out the ideas that aren’t only the most innovative, but also most scalable.”
This round has marked the last of the Cannes Chimera challenges. “Over the last five years, we have, with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, created a series of sustainable campaigns and built meaningful relationships across the industry. Most importantly we’ve hopefully inspired the community to apply their creativity to the highest of causes: humankind,” continued Thomas.
“Our partnership with Cannes Lions has supported the inception and development of a truly unique set of communications projects that would not have otherwise been possible,” said Tom Scott, Director of Brand & Campaigns at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “We’re grateful for this collaboration with the Cannes Lions creative community, which has provided the development sector with new inspiration.”
Since launching in 2011, Cannes Chimera has presented the industry with five different creative challenges, resulting in over 4,000 total submissions across five competition briefs. The initiative provided pilot funding for 34 ideas. One concept received additional funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support further development and distribution: ‘VIOOLY’, it is an online app that acts like a spellcheck, which helps writers in the global health and development sector refine and adapt their writing to appeal to public audiences. It was developed by GALEWiLL Design in New York.
In addition, the initiative’s initial start- up funding helped establish several projects that are now ongoing, including:
•‘Radio8’, created by Mark Bashore, is an online and mobile storytelling experience built around the dreamscapes of children living in both developed and developing countries.
•‘CGNetSwara’, by Environics Trust, is an interactive voice response system and network that enables citizen reporting and resolution of community development issues in rural central India.
•Boston University’s ‘Pamoja Together’ is a student-run journalism network co-located at Boston University and Jaramogi Oginga University of Science and Technology in Kenya, telling and syndicating real stories about the impact of foreign aid.
•‘Broadcasting Foreign Aid’, by ProSocial, is a scripted dramatic television pilot on humanitarian aid.