Independent agency Community Singapore gives its Cannes awards budget away to charities through their new initiative Campaign Lionheart
Instead of entering the Cannes Lions International Festival Of Creativity this year, Singapore independent agency, Community, created a campaign with its limited Cannes awards budget.
The newly set up shop opted not to spend on any entries to Cannes – donating the total amount of entering 10 entries to a diverse range of charitable and community minded causes.
Titled Campaign Lionheart, the initiative consists of collaborations with nonprofit organisations Food From the Heart, Animal Lovers League and Singapore Association for the Visually Handicapped, to help those in need.
From a total amount of about S$8,000, the agency supplied food necessities to 100 elderly people living without family support, purchased toys for over 25 children from low-income families, vaccinated 100 abandoned dogs against nine life-threatening diseases, and hired visually impaired masseurs to surprise foreign laborers with free massages.
Community also pledged to crowd-funding efforts of worthy causes from around the world. These include: helping the families and victims of the recent Sabah earthquake, launching education initiatives in Myanmar, helping to build a waterless toilet system in Peru, giving a working student the chance to see his favourite band in a concert, even helping in the production of a nerdy
Star Trek fan film.
Said Ng, Founder and Executive Creative Director, “It’s June in the advertising circuit, and that can only mean one thing – the prestigious Cannes Lions awards. As much as it hurts to sit this one out, the least we can do is some good with a small budget previously set aside in the spirit of creative competition and celebration. Our humble initiative made us tremendously happy in a very different way.”
10 Comments
Interesting public stunt to promote your agency, but this will mean absolutely nothing if Community enters any awards shows in the future. Bear in mind, we will.
The owner of this agency has built an entire career on doing real ads so this is an unusual step. We need to ask the following before deciding if this is just a lame stunt:
1. How long have you been in business…is it even a year…in which case, chances are you would not have anything to enter anyway.
2. How many clients do you have besides projects from 2 shopping malls and a budget airline…once again, may not be enough to generate any award worthy work.
3. Are you going to enter this piece about donating your awards budget to charity in the promo/activation category of cannes next year?
Awesome idea!!! Shouldn’t more agencies be doing this? Well done Community!
@RealCD – Maybe you should watch the video first before commenting, they did say they’re new and have no work ready for Cannes. Funny, honest and in good spirit.
Absolutely love this idea of giving back. More please.
What real sacrifice is the agency making? Is there a mind-blowing submission that has a guaranteed Gran Prix Lion that the agency decided to scrap and pursue this initiative instead?
Just because there are no good enough submissions, you want to take the holier-than-thou path and cast shade on the 40,000+ submissions this year?
Grow some nuts community…
Actually, real ballsy of a new agency to do this.
Seen too many wannabes enter half assed campaigns only to throw away their entry fees.
It’s their money and they can do what they want with it. And these guys did some good.
They even gave their ‘humble initiative’ a humble name: Campaign Lionheart.
“Real CD” and “creative bich”, you both sound (with all due respect) like complete wankers.
I have no idea whether you are male or female (you’re certainly gullible, in bich’s case – you really think that those 40,000+ entries weren’t, in many cases, a further waste of someone’s bonus and increment on the altar of the creative ego?).
Either way, please get married – and don’t forget to send your incredibly witty wedding card into the Design Lions next year.
“Here comes the bride”, although the orgasm is as fake as they are. Sad.
There’s an agency in town that pays for its staff members to go on a trip wherever they want to…once every year. They dont enter awards either….but they take care of their own.
I dont see them making a video about it.
There are a bunch of local agencies who spend more on PR than on their employees or even a remotely good cause. Case in point is TSLA, who keep winning AOTY awards judged by clients, without having won a single creative award. They have a ‘social services’ arm that produces movie screenings and the like, which they charge for. When the CEO was asked how that was a ‘social service’ his answer was that they were ‘improving the creative standards of the industry by giving people exposure to arty films’. Utterly arrogant topped with a serving of delusional.