Global experience agency Huge, Amazon, and Earth Day Network, the world’s largest recruiter to the environmental movement, has awarded Rehab London with Gold for its citizen science campaign idea, “#Theirs,” at the second annual “Change for Good” Hackathon during the 66th Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The Change for Good’s Silver and Bronze winners went to “Garden Solution” by McCann Worldgroup (Romania) and “Clean Water” by Wunder Inc (Canada), respectively. The final judging ceremony took place on the Terrace Stage in Palais II on the last day of the Festival.
In addition to being awarded at the Festival, the winning teams will receive support from Amazon and Earth Day Network to assist with their go-to-market launch ahead of Earth Day 2020. In its second year, the Hackathon helps to create the technology needed for Earth Challenge 2020, a global citizen science initiative of Earth Day Network, the Wilson Center, and the Eco-Capitals Forum that will mark the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day.
This year’s Gold winner, #Theirs, created by Rehab London, focuses on children, schools and families, to provide education on ways to take part in environmental change and to become a Citizen Scientist. Slated to launch two weeks ahead of Earth Day 2020, #Theirs will grab people’s attention through Instagram. Through the campaign’s call to action, #Theirs will encourage users to photograph a landmark with the sky in the background and the hashtag. Then, through the machine learning algorithm using Amazon’s SageMaker, each image will be evaluated for air quality.
On Earth Day, #Theirs will launch its reveal and show people that they’ve been contributing valuable data all along. The campaign will drive participants to a newly launched app for engagement, breakdowns of air pollution in the area, regional leaderboards and the opportunity to donate towards air sensors for local schools. To view photos of the campaign, please see here.
Kathleen Rogers, President of Earth Day Network, said, “2020 is a crucial year for the more than seven billion people alive today. Over the 50 years since the first Earth Day many extraordinary transformations have contributed to conserving and more intelligently managing our world. But we know that unless we act now and with urgency and at scale, we may hand over a planet unfit and incapable of meeting the hopes, dreams, and aspirations for future generations. Earth Challenge 2020 offers a huge opportunity for citizens everywhere to get engaged and make their desire for real action heard through the lens of science. We are delighted to be teaming up with the tech industry and many other amazing companies to make this happen.”
This year’s Change for Good hackathon consisted of six cross-disciplinary agency teams from around the world, working on June 18- 19th at the Cannes Lions Festival grounds, to ideate and develop products alongside creative, experience design, scientists, business development, and solution architect mentors from Amazon, Huge, Earth Day Network, the Wilson Center and the Eco-Capitals Forum. The teams were challenged to imagine and build solutions, products, and campaigns that advance Earth Challenge 2020’s key research questions around water quality, air quality, local impacts of climate change, biodiversity, plastic pollution and food sustainability.
The six agency team in this year’s Change for Good Hackathon included Rehab, VMLY&R, ACG Hungary, Wunder Canada, McCann Romania, and Dentsu Jayme Syfu - Apollo of the Philippines. After the six teams ideated their solutions and campaign launch plan, they presented to a panel of esteemed judges in two rounds of judging, including:
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Pete Stein, Global Chief Executive Officer of Huge
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Jason Musante, Global Chief Creative Officer of Huge
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Mark Lehmann, Chief Technology Officer at Global Citizen
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Janie deGarmo, Deputy Director at the US Department of State
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Nick Nuttall, International Strategic Communications Director, Earth Day Network
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Stephanie Smith, Social Media Lead at NASA
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Fabrice Beaulieu, Chief Marketing Officer at RMO.com
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Kerry Flynn, Editor at Digiday
Influencer and brand mentorship from Accuweather, IAB, NASA, Gary Vaynerchuck and other brands was provided to teams, as well throughout the event. The grand-prize winning team comprised of 5 individuals from Rehab’s United Kingdom office: Neil Cooper, Ryan Grieve, Beth Abel, Claire Medcalf, adn Camille Bourdier. Below you can read an overview about their winning campaign and go-to-market strategy in partnership with Amazon and Earth Day.
