Meet Young Lions Competition Winners Who Hijacked Lunch Breaks to Help Feed the Homeless
Tasked with crafting an innovative PR strategy to help Moroccan NGO, Jood Kitchen, as part of Cannes Young Lions competition last year, Accenture Song Singapore’s copywriter, Ginola (Gin) Tan, and MulllenLowe Singapore's art director, Tan Yuan Ling, came up with the winning concept: ‘Lunch Tax Break’.
With Jood often struggling with challenges such as limited funds and resources, economic conditions, trust issues, geographical constraints, and fundraising costs, the organisation often loses time and energy on launching attention-grabbing initiatives to attract help, which could be better spent on the life-saving support that it provides.
In aid to this issue, ‘Lunch Tax Break’ transformed typical lunch purchases into tax-deductible charitable donations – showing Moroccans they can easily make a positive social impact by choosing Jood Kitchen.
To find out more about this work and how winning Young Lions has influenced their careers, LBB speaks with Gin and Yuan who open up about imposter syndrome, making work the real world cares about, and how they feel advertising could be a little less formulaic.
LBB> How has winning Young Lions influenced your career so far?
Gin> It was definitely an encouraging experience. I think it’s pretty normal to question whether you’re right for something when you’re just starting out, so winning a competition like this was a real confidence booster, more than anything. I’ve moved agencies since the win last year, but I like to think that I’m still fighting the same good fight, working to make work that works.
Yuan> Winning at Young Lions will always be a benchmark many young creatives aspire to, and achieving it really raised the bar for our own day-to-day work, even in our bread-and-butter projects.
LBB> Tell us about winning with ‘Lunch Tax Break’!
Gin and Yuan> Our brief was to drive support and subscription for Jood Kitchen’s concept – providing meals to corporate businesses in Morocco while empowering and reintegrating the homeless in the country.
We realised that with too many charity organisations vying for the same pool of donations, it had become too difficult for donors to decide who to contribute to. It led us to hijack Morocco’s tax relief benefits, by transforming a standard receipt into an official donation certificate that made each lunch purchase tax-deductible.
It was to show Moroccans that they didn’t always have to give extra to contribute more – they could simply do so by choosing better.
LBB> Looking back, what doors did the competition open? Or what confidence did it give you?
Gin> Winning Young Lions definitely put us on the radar of some agencies back home, which we’re really thankful for. It also led to us meeting so many other impressive young creatives whom we’re now glad to call friends. The win was also a nice validation of the hard work that we’ve put in, showing us that we are somewhat on the right track, if such a thing even exists.
Yuan> I guess it’s just in my personality – no matter how small the win, there’s always that bit of imposter syndrome telling me it was probably just luck, and that I won’t be so lucky next time. But winning at an international level definitely broadened my exposure to a higher standard of conceptual thinking and craftsmanship. It also helped open doors to greater recognition among other creatives and creative directors, and with that, more opportunities.
LBB> What’s been the most unexpected twist or turning point in your journey since then?
Gin> I think it’s been more or less the same, in the broad sense of things. Sure, we’ve both moved on from our previous agency, but we always remind ourselves why we started doing this in the first place, which was to make things that people in the real world, not just the advertising world, will care about.
LBB> What’s one piece of work you've been involved in post win that you feel carries the same spirit or energy as your Young Lions entry?
Gin> If I’m going to be honest, I don’t think I’ve managed to sell any work that’s been as interesting as our work for Young Lions. Not yet, at least. It’s a high I’m still chasing.
Yuan> If you’ll indulge a bit of old glory, there was a year early in my career where a different partner of mine and I won Young Spikes Asia for a project called ‘The Cleft Collection’. Full of passion and naivety, we somehow managed to convince our agency to pitch the winning idea to the client. With a bit of luck, everything went smoothly, the work was bought and produced and, even more miraculously, it ended up being shortlisted at Cannes.
LBB> If you were writing a new Young Lions brief, what challenge would you put in front of today’s competitors?
Gin> I think advertising these days is a little formulaic. Everyone approaches ideas in the form of ‘problem–insight–solution’, which sometimes leads to work that only makes sense in case studies. If I had to come up with a new brief, it would be to simply ‘make me feel something for the product or service you’re selling’.
Yuan> I’ve always been a big fan of working on projects that are a little bit more challenging, so if I had to write my own version of a brief, it would be to try selling a Samsung phone to a die-hard Apple user, or vice versa.
