Midway through a frenetic week of creativity-packed competitions, the Young PR Lions PR contest delivers three inspiring campaigns
If you’ve been following the Now Go Create blog you’ll know that I’ve been at the Cannes Lions festival, where I’m involved with a series of competitions that have been taking place every day to find the best new young creatives from around the world.
In this post, I’ll let you in on what happened when the judges picked the three winners (from 30 teams) in the coveted PR competition…
Young Lions 2019 PR Competition
The brief (as provided by WWF):
“Food production is a leading driver of biodiversity loss globally… we want to tell this story and drive systemic change through a high-profile campaign to end deforestation caused by food production by the biggest brands around the world.”
“When we think of food, we tend to think of all the great things that come with it. The tastes,the aromas, the memories of special times celebrated. What we don’t think about is the natural capital that went into producing our food. It’s shocking to think we’ve cleared an area roughly the size of South America to grow the world’s crops, and an area the size ofAfrica to raise and feed livestock. The food we eat is destroying nature and we don’t evenknow it. We need the retailers, restaurants and brands we buy from to help us make that choice and eliminate food that causes deforestation.”
Stop food from being one of the main causes of deforestation around our planet.
You can read the full PR brief here – and see if you think you can come up with something equally arresting as the three finalists.
The judges for this category were Arina Avdeeva, Executive Partner and Co-Founder at Friends Moscow, Harriet Courage, Senior Consultant at Don’t Cry Wolf (shown debriefing some of the competitors above) and Jaclyn Ruelle, Managing Director, Cultural Impact & Brand Communications at The Marin Agency.
Bronze: Team Hong Kong
Would you buy a steak from a supermarket if there was a sticker on it that explained the environmental cost of bringing it to the shelves? Team Hong Kong thought this was a good way to make people think twice about what they were buying – this “true cost”, as they put it, encompassed a wide-reaching campaign that would also see customers seeing the full environmental impact of what they had bought on their till receipt, too.
Knowing that your weekly shop had caused 2,000 trees to die would be sobering – and the judges really liked the idea’s hard-hitting edge.
Team members: Darryl Soh and Erica Stein from Edelman.
Silver: Team Finland
Cleverly playing with the current consumer demand for “one-of-a-kind” food experiences, Team Finland wanted to raise awareness and grab headlines by offering a sobering experience that no one would forget: a meal in a forest that would be cut down tomorrow.
“We’ve reached our goal when millennials choose to dine sustainably; because they want the forests – and the planet – to have a tomorrow” they said.
The judges thought this was arresting, creative and powerful.
Team members: Katariina Harteela and Toni Salminen of Hasan & Partner
Gold: Team Japan
Team Japan’s plan was to hack the most prestigious meal in the world, the annual Nobel Banquet, attended by Kings, Queens, politicians and scientists, and give guests a choice of a regular meat-laden meal (the unsustainable choice) or one made from insects (the sustainable choice).
If they chose the sustainable choice, they would likely be reported in the media, which would help to spread the message about the impact of meat production on the environment. If they chose the meat option, they would be encouraged to share what kind of solutions they could offer to help solve the problem.
Team Japan felt it would all lead to a global conversation about the subject and the judges were inclined to agree.
Team members: Taro Taniwaki of Hakuhodo and Takumi Sekiya of TBWA.Hakuhodo
Check out our other write-ups of the competition here on the blog.
- Want to seriously up your own creative game? Check out our selection of acclaimed creativity training courses or drop us a line at lucy@nowgocreate.co.uk