Digitas Health’s Collette Douaihy Reveals Her Three Highlights from Cannes Health & Wellness Lions 2018
Collette Douaihy, Digitas Health’s Executive Vice President, ECD and Cannes Juror spent a whirlwind week evaluating almost 1,000 entries from all over the world.
The award-winning work represents a range of global issues: suicide, health accessibility, bullying, drink safety, crop biodiversity, opioid addiction and organ donation.
These are not just personal illnesses; they’re social crises. Here are her insights, in her own words and her three highlights about the 2018 Health & Wellness Lions Awards
1. The Grand Prix Winner – an emotional campaign advocating organ donation – is a powerful campaign from which we all can draw inspiration.
I was extremely impressed with the Corazón, Give Your Heart campaign. A beautifully integrated campaign that fuses health and wellness into our everyday lives, it included a feature film based on a patient’s life experience that seamlessly tells the brand’s story while sparking an emotional response from viewers. The campaign was extremely effective in raising awareness -- not an easy task -- especially when it comes to organ donation. It made people feel something, and then made it easy for them to become part of the solution. It is a powerful campaign from which to draw inspiration.
2. Suicide is indeed a world problem, and it was encouraging to see campaigns that boldly and graciously seek to address the issue.
The work I saw for suicide prevention and awareness was powerful and touching. Across the work, the number of people, young and old, taking their own lives astonished me. Work like Project 84, a live installation in the U.K. represented the alarming statistics of male suicide, is a poignant reminder of a real life lost, and a call to society to come together and take a stand against suicide. This work, combined with the recent very sad news of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, will ignite concern and much needed attention.
3. Great art and simple ideas are helping to improve so many lives.
I’m always in awe of innovative creative for the greater good; I saw many simple ideas that are impactful and helping to improve so many lives. The I RESCUE campaign created playful eye masks for children that were fun to use and became an effective screening tool for Amblyopia or Lazy Eye. Equally impressive was Habitat for Humanity’s Dissolving Posters that prevent mosquito larva from breeding in Brazil.
