Judging the World’s Best Creative Work for Sustainability Impact

As LIONS entries open and momentum rises towards June, the definition of ‘creative excellence’ is once again in the spotlight. This extract from the new book, Sustainable Advertising, by the Advertising Association’s communications director Matt Bourn and Ad Net Zero chair Sebastian Munden, considers not only the creativity of the work but also its sustainability and positive impact on climate change.

The following is an edit of an interview Matt conducted with Isabelle Quevilly, Meta, a juror of the SDG Lions at Cannes Lions 2023. She is also a Campaign Ad Net Zero judge, and the chair of the sustainability category for the DMA Awards. In 2018, she led the award-winning The People's Seat campaign to drive climate action for the United Nations UNFCCC at COP24. 

Firstly, please could you tell us a little bit about what the SDG Lions is?

Absolutely. The SDG Lions was created in 2018, in partnership with the United Nations. The aim is to recognise and reward work and solutions for systemic change against the UN's 17 sustainable development goals across people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnership for 2030. The main criteria for judging is impact with 40% against the results, then 20% idea, 20% strategy, and 20% execution. It is a very different Lions - with more weight on the impact towards achieving the SDGs.

What were the sorts of things coming through to help recognising work that genuinely had a positive contribution to the SDGs?

For us, there were three things. The first one was the why, what's the purpose of this work? Is this showing any integrity with what the brand is doing anyway?

Is it something genuine? The second was, is this something that can drive systemic change? Is this something new? The third was impact and scalability of the work. Can you see this work duplicated in many markets? Can this campaign make a difference for humanity's biggest problems?

I’d like to talk now about the Grand Prix winner by Mastercard, a campaign helping Ukrainians to resettle in Poland. When I think about the SDGs I tend to think about climate change, water or conscious consumption, but there's more to the SDGs than that, isn't there, so would you share a little bit more as to why it won and what you think we can learn from and build on?

I can tell you this was a unanimous decision in the room to select this piece of work. It is very aligned to Mastercard's purpose, to connect everyone to priceless possibilities. This is a company in a category that is probably not the most creative traditionally, and not one that would be transformative from a creative standpoint. So, to your question around how can this solve a climate problem? This was about refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine. However, we know fast displacement of population is going to only increase in the coming years. So, climate refugees are only just beginning to really appear, and we must ask, how are brands going to support this? It's super interesting to see the partnership between Mastercard, rental websites, the government and the local city councils, all coming together to pull data points that give refugees settling options.

It's a huge amount of people involved and it's an easy solution to replicate and scale to other refugee crises. That's interestingly one of the criticisms the work has had - why stop at Ukrainian refugees in Poland? There is so much more potential in this idea. What is also super positive in terms of real impact is that it changed perceptions of what refugees bring to the country, and the GDP growth. You see the media saying, the refugees are amazing, they are helping our country. That's brilliant, because that's how we should always consider refugees and immigrants, something great for the country, not something to fear.

What I think is brilliant to hear you articulate is yes, essentially, the idea was dealing with a humanitarian crisis, (i.e., refugees fleeing Ukraine), but the logic is we're entering a period where there will be climate refugees and you are highlighting brands should prepare to support people. How will we deal with climate migration? In a way that's positive, constructive, that doesn’t feed a negative narrative?

This is why Mastercard has done something quite impressive. You see a brand taking a position entirely aligned with their business, but also deliver value for society. That's how we need to look at the marketing dollars we're investing - can they work better for society?

More generally, what was the best of the work you saw coming through around climate action?

Specifically on climate action, my favourite piece of work was Prêt A Voter by Solar Impulse in the French market. They connected lawyers and activists to write laws ready to debate and vote for. Lots of people are putting forward policies to drive transformation but this has been very slow. So Solar Impulse wrote up the legislation for increased use of solar energy in France, for example, allowing solar panels on water. They got three laws voted and nine others being discussed. This can be scaled to any market, right? It doesn't need to be driven by political motivations. It doesn't need to take sides. It is effective, it can be debated, it can be acted upon. It's a brilliant idea for legislation.

I agree. If we're going to get sustainability embedded into every single award consideration, which ultimately is the end game here, we're going to have to find ways through that sort of tension between it's good today, but it's not good enough for the future. This will be a big factor as we think about the future of awards and the biggest change around sustainability. As an industry we know how to evaluate and present work around commercial metrics, whether that's sales, brand awareness, competitive market share - these are all second nature to advertising professionals. It is not the same for sustainability metrics.

We all have responsibilities to bring the question up... how can we get a better, more positive impact? We can all raise this when we talk about the brief with clients.

Do you think awards programmes will come under even more pressure it they recognise work that isn’t obviously better for the planet, as well? I think it will be hard to defend something as creatively excellent if it can’t also evidence it has been better for the planet as a result.

I completely agree. There is a debate right now about the Effies which have selected three pieces of work as the best of the creative excellence and they're all for companies promoting meat-based food. People were quick to say, ‘Is this really what the world needs today?’ We need to remember when we make a selection as a jury, we're sending a message to the world, this is what we want to see more of, this is great. You must ask yourself, is this really the message you want to send?

Embedding 'sustainability' into the heart of all advertising awards

Ascential, the owners of Cannes Lions, made the first step in 2023 by including a question about sustainability in every award entry. Entrants seeking further advice were invited to visit a special section providing guidance on the Ad Net Zero website. The question was voluntary, not mandatory, and any submitted information in the first year was not shared with the jurors. The principal purpose of adding the question in for the first time was to establish a benchmark. It was important to develop an understanding of just how much the advertising industry was considering sustainability in its work.

In 2023, we are still a way from every advertising and marketing services professional being able to submit the type of data we are aiming for. Most awards organisers are reliant on the volume of entries as a revenue stream. Barriers to entry, like a requirement to submit data that isn't available or accessible for some, will have an unintended consequence. So, a roadmap to make this happen is needed, one where year-by-year, the requirement for sustainability data and evidence is ratcheted up from voluntary for benchmarking purposes, to voluntary in return for additional points, to voluntary with penalties for no information supplied, to entirely mandatory.

This extract from Sustainable Advertising by Matt Bourn and Sebastian Munden is © 2024 and reproduced with permission from Kogan Page Ltd. All rights reserved.