Cannes Lions Awards Winner-ICRC
The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is a global event for those working in creative communications, advertising, and related fields. It is considered the largest gathering of the advertising industry. It is a five-day festival which takes place in Cannes, France on the month June. Each year over 10.000 people from 90 countries approximately visit the festival in order to have an experience difficult to forget by discussing industry issues and communicating with people of their common field. The lion-shaped award was inspired by the lion in Piazza San Marco in Venice.
When Mrs. Betty asked us to search the most famous and important advertising festival in Cannes that takes place every year and choose one advertisment (winner) to make a presentation, I can admit that we had no specific idea about it. The whole team was scared and unprepared for what was coming. Everything changed so quickly though. After doing some research we could understand the importance of the festival and how cool and interesting it was. At first, the procedure of choosing a particular ad was so challenging because every 5 minutes we were changing our opinion on which one was more suitable for our presentation. We had an unrestricted number of interesting ads and we didnt know which to choose. All in all, we had an double-edged sword to deal with.
With the research still going on, we came across with “Hope”, an advertisment created by the International Commitee of the Red Cross which it had won a great amount of awards. ICRC was established in 1863 and it is an independent, neutral organization ensuring humanitarian protection and assistance for victims of war and armed violence. It takes action in response to emergencies and promotes respect for international humanitarian law and its implementation in national law. They are based in Geneva, Switzerland, and employ 16,000 people in more than 80 countries. The ICRC is funded mainly by voluntary donations from governments and from National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
Choosing the ICRC award winning ad was a no-brainer for many reasons. Before I get to explain our choice, it is prudent that we give you the opportunity to watch the ad and have the same experience with us as a team and the rest of the class.
Yeap, I know you are shocked, you should be, we are also everytime we rewatch it. That was our main purpose after choosing the “Hope” advertisment. Going on with a smart and funny ad would be so easy for us, but easy is not a word that is commonly found in our actions as a team, same with the ICRC movement. As challenging as it gets it’s better.
The “Hope” ad shows us the cruelty that exists in our every day life all over the world. A father looking very anxious drives to an unknown destination. In the back seat of the car, his daughter seriously woonded crying and asking for help. We can see his pain in his eyes trying to keep her awake until they reach in the hospital. The girl is unconscious and the car can’t move due to traffic. The father decides to carry his baby girl running to the hospital but then…he sees what humanity is capable of doing. The hospital is bombed, his daughter is helpless, she will die and he can do nothing for that to change.
This ICRC ad takes place in a war torn country and the main message that is passed is “No hospital, no hope.” “Hope” is a global campaign focused on attacks on hospitals and healthcare workers, which are a daily occurrence in areas of armed conflict. There are many reasons why ICRC won so many awards. The short film is realistic and emotionally intense, it addresses a moderns world problem. Many people can relate to this issue and ICRC is a well respected organization which supports human existence and rights.
The message we wanna pass with this article is that the world needs to be changed and they are many organizations and people that try in a regular basis to make that happen. We, common people, must support them and try to help as much as we can.
