World's creative elite join forces to council adland for UN brief

Creative leaders around the world are banding together for the greater good.

Advertising’s innovative elite from major agencies and brands have joined a new platform to answer an unprecedented global brief from the United Nations (UN) to help tackle health and awareness during COVID-19.

Agency staff from the likes of FCB, Publicis and WPP have built the Global Creative Review which works as an open source council to check in and see if ideas will resonate globally.

It’s not a pitch. It’s not a creative competition. It’s a global collaboration to make a difference for the better. The platform is open up for creative submissions today.

Liz Taylor, CCO at Leo Burnett, said: "This is not about advertising. Creativity has the power to transform human behavior. We need inspirational ideas that move people to act. We need the entire industry of creatives to bring their own magic in an effort to fight against our common enemy.

"Ideas that not only change the way people live but have the power to change the world. There’s nothing more powerful than using creativity to help solve world problems. Magic."

Craig Elimeliah, creative leader at VMLY&R, added: "The UN has long recognized that the creative community has a unique super power to move the world, therefore we all have a responsibility to lend our talents to help their efforts."

The UN brief

The UN needs your help in translating critical public health messages, into work that will engage and inform people across different cultures, languages, communities and platforms. The shortlisted work will reach everyone, everywhere.

More than 200 creative leaders have signed up to donate review time including: Susan Credle, CCO, FCB Global; Andre Le Masurier, CCO EMEA, R/GA; Damon Stapleton, CCO, DDB NZ/AUS; Owen Lee, CCO, FCB Inferno; Liz Taylor, CCO, Leo Burnett; Britt Nolan, CCO, DDB North America; Per Pedersen, GCC, Grey Group; Joe Sciarrotta, Deputy CCO, Ogilvy; Marie Ronn, GCD, Spotify, Geoffrey Hantson, CCO, Happiness and; Ronald Ing, CCO, Isobar.

Others come from agencies including 72andsunny, Gut, David, Cheil Worldwide, Wunderman Thompson, Tribal, Dentsu, Happiness, BBDO, Havas and many more. More than 40 countries are now represented, but the platform is still looking for more, especially from Asia and Africa.

Dennis Claus, one of the creatives behind this drive, said: "The big goal is to help creatives get to work that is universal, that can affect different cultures. We now have over 200 creative leaders signed up; now we want to get as many ideas reviewed as possible, before the UN submission deadline. If we can make some of them resonate across the world, that would be great.

"In the long run, we would like to keep this platform going to tackle other world problems: climate change, equality."

The platform works by connecting a creative with three leaders from different continents. An email conversation allows them to connect and to organize the creative review in a way that is most convenient for them: email, video call, phone. Whatever works. The platform aims to facilitate and serves as an introduction tool.

"We had a ton of ideas, but quickly realized we needed help to make them truly global," says the team. "We are building this plane while flying, but wanted to get this out to the world as quickly as possible. The world today needs ideas that work across continents."