UN Recognizes Brands comitted with Sustainable Development

The president of the jury of the Health Grand Prix for Good at Cannes Lions, Rajesh Mirchandani, CCO of the UN Foundation, said the jurors sought to honor creative campaigns that promote social causes, and whose decisions were guided by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to reward those campaigns that promoted solutions to social problems.

“We saw ads that were amazingly moving, vital and relevant, and which raised awareness of critical problems. For us the winner, TBWA’s Blink to Speak, was incredibly powerful for its simplicity, but also for its scalability, and I think it’s crucial that the winners in this category have ideas that can continue to scale up to meet the growing demands and so can achieve universal appeal around the world” he said.

For Mirchandani, for many years brands have been involved in corporate social responsibility, but now there’s an understanding that they need to go further because their consumers expect them to. They expect their favorite brands to take a stand. “We want to see brands taking sustainable development to the core of their business” Mirchandani said.

He praised creative industries and private sector companies that understand the importance of supporting sustainable development and creating products, services and campaigns that really promote and achieve progress in these causes. “I would like to encourage many other companies to participate in this as well. If we want to comply with the SDGs, we need everyone to get involved.”