YouTube and Cannes Lions launch “Good Work” to match creatives with non-profits

Cristina Blanaru Creativity, Marketing

YouTube and Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity launched “Good Work”, partnership designed to bring together the transformational power of creative minds, with the issues that need them most.

YouTube and Cannes Lions have collaborated with creative agency Ralph, to create a YouTube Channel designed around “the blank page” concept. It showcases briefs from non-profit organisations worldwide seeking creative support to increase the public’s engagement with the critical issues they address.

Using their global reach, YouTube and Cannes Lions will now issue a call-to-arms to creatives around the world. Creative people from any industry are invited to submit a one-minute (or less) video ad to address one or more of the non-profit briefs.

A panel of expert judges, chaired by Craig Davis, Chief Creative Officer Publicis Mojo and founder of the world’s first brand-centric social media platform, Brandkarma, will shortlist the most powerful ideas, and winners will be invited to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in June to meet the non-profit heads and showcase their work.

How Good Work will work:

  • Creatives can today access youtube.com/goodwork where they can view briefs from around the world
  • Creatives will have six weeks to create and upload their video ads of maximum 60 seconds duration. The deadline is 23:59 GMT on 9 May 2011
  • In May, the most groundbreaking videos will be shortlisted by a jury of leading creative directors
  • At the beginning of June, Good Work jury chair Craig Davis will review the shortlisted submissions and identify five outstanding submissions
  • The winners will be invited to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in June 2011
  • The winners and Craig Davis will participate in the Good Work Seminar at the 58th Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity to discuss how creative minds can positively impact today’s most pressing social, economic, and environmental challenges
  • Beyond the Festival, YouTube and Cannes Lions plan to establish “Good Work” as a platform to connect creatives with non-profits on an ongoing basis.

As a global creative community, some of our most potent work tackles issues that severely challenge humankind. At our best, we attract attention, shift attitudes, and motivate behavioural change; with the world facing more complex and confounding problems than ever before, there is a need for creative minds to solve them.

Congratulations to YouTube on recognising its potential as a platform for mass collaboration, and on initiating this project. I’m proud and excited to help make it happen.

Craig Davis

Jury Chair of “Good Work”

We are delighted to be joining forces again with YouTube to launch ‘Good Work’, a global competition and an exciting opportunity for creatives around the world to showcase some brilliant ideas that will benefit non-for-profit organisations. Creativity is the very essence of what the Cannes Lions Festival is all about and so to be able to offer a global creative platform for such a worthy cause is an enormous privilege.

Philip Thomas

CEO of Cannes Lions

58th Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity will take place in Cannes, from 19th to 25th of June 2011.