Festival of Media launches the Cause Campaign Awards | M&M Global

Festival of Media launches the Cause Campaign Awards

Five years ago, jurors and the team at Festival of Media were wowed by a campaign from DB Export Beer, who launched a campaign to save New Zealand’s beaches and which won gold at that year’s Festival of Media APAC Awards ceremony.

At the heart of the campaign by Colenso BBDO was an idea to encourage drinkers of their beer to recycle their empty beer bottles into sand. As a result, the campaign helped save New Zealand’s beaches and keep recyclable glass out of landfills.

Such was the impact of this campaign both literally and on the minds of the team at Festival of Media we took the decision to introduce a category into our all our awards programmes in 2018 focusing on cause/purpose marketing campaigns. This has resulted in these categories becoming the two of the most popular over the last four years and in 2021 more than 85% of all gold winning campaigns across all of the categories had a cause at their heart.

What’s more it has generated a lot of heated discussions and debate amongst our jurors, and in some cases – in categories non-cause related – the judges have opted to use cause as the deciding factor in whether, or not a campaign takes gold.

As result of this the business took the decision to launch its first awards programme since 2017 – Festival of Media North America – with the aim of showcasing and amplifying the fantastic work cause/purpose led marketing that the industry is producing, which will happen via the Festival of Media Cause Campaign Awards programme.

We know there is lots of skepticism about the sector and in some quarters – rightly so – it is derided as inspiring consumerism and as a result waste, but there are campaigns out there which are making positive societal impacts and we want to shine a spotlight on these and encourage more of the brands around the world to do similar and use the benchmarks – which we will create from the data within the entries – to help craft cause campaigns which can encourage change, education, and in some cases tangible impacts on people, places and the planet.

Ultimately it is about encouraging the global media and marketing sectors to be a force for good, which is something that is starting to happen and we are keen to push this further.

To help us achieve this we have teamed up with Cause for Change to provide an opportunity for third sector organisations to enter and amplify the campaigns they are creating by themselves.

It’s an opportunity for the industry to make a positive impact on people, places and the plant. Together we can do this…

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