Every day, advertising influences the world intensely, profusely and repeatedly with creative ideas to change the world. The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation know this, and have teamed up to promote the use of creativity by the world’s advertisers and communicators to solve global problems .
How have they chosen to do this? Through a contest called Cannes Chimera, and this is an enthusiastic invitation to participate. However, no one could do it better than Melinda Gates herself.
We believe that everyone deserves the opportunity to live a healthy and productive life, so the world needs big changes. None of us should ignore this need on the scale of humanity as a whole.
As advertising creatives, we are professionals at telling stories in extraordinary ways. We do this effectively for the products and services of advertising clients who allow us to exist with their brands. With stories we connect, infect and manage to ignite emotions to achieve results. Could it be that we can also do it for good?
Not a moment’s hesitation, and of course, the answer is yes. We are more than 7,000 million people, in a state of inequality so unequal that we cannot sleep peacefully even for a minute in the face of such disparity. Among all these people, some of us privileged by creativity have a calling and we must answer it with participation.
However, the Cannes Chimera involves recognition on the Cannes Lions stage, the prestige of winning with ideas to change the world and cash prizes of up to $100,000 (that’s right: one hundred thousand dollars). Winners will also be on the Gates Foundation campus and add to their efforts, now reinforced by Cannes, to make an effective contribution to the planet.
Don’t miss this message below. The call is inclusive to all the people of the world and focuses on those who today win with advertising creativity.
In Costa Rica thousands of us try to make our special contribution in different ways. I try to do it through Comunidad, Via Costarricense and Openhouse, to name three efforts in which I concentrate my energy.
It is time to move from the “I” to the “we” with ideas for doing good. It is time to move from the chair to the world that needs us. It is time to give back with our creativity and concrete accomplishments. May you participate! Challenge ignites and achievement inspires.
This is a great new global opportunity with the spring of Cannes Lions and the Gates Foundation: the Cannes Chimera contest.