Recipeace - Winner D&AD White Pencil

I am still a bit star-struck from yesterday evening D&AD’s first White Pencil symposium having heard brilliant speakers David Jones, CEO of Havas and Co-Founder of One Young World, Jan Chichase - Executive Creative Director of Global Insights at frog (also dubbed the James Bond of design research by FastCompany), Kim Slicklein - President of OgilvyEarth Worldwide, Marc Mathieu - SVP of Marketing at Unilever and Jeremy Gilley, British filmmaker and founder of Peace One Day. True CATALYSTS convinced that creativity can change the world for the better!

What the Oscars are for the movie industry, D&AD’s Pencils are for the creative industry bringing together the crème de la crème of creative commercial talent.

Founded in 1962, D&AD, formerly known as British Design and Art Direction, has been awarding their coveted and widely recognized Pencils for the best and most innovative creative work in design, advertising and digital. Yellow Pencils are awarded to outstanding, rather than merely brilliant work. The best of the best and truly groundbreaking work is awarded the ultimate of awards; the Black Pencil.

This year, in its 50^th year of existence, D&AD introduced a new pencil to the range. The White Pencil category was established to award the best design work and creative campaigns aiming to make a positive difference, aiming to solve real problems in the world, aiming for sustainability in the broadest sense - social, environmental and commercial.

For the brief of the first White Pencil, D&AD partnered with the non-profit organisation Peace One Day (POD).

POD was launched by British filmmaker Jeremy Gilley in 1999 to establish an annual day of global ceasefire and non-violence with a fixed date. In 2001, the UN member states adopted 21st of September as Peace Day and since then the goal has been to grow awareness of and engagement on the day so that people can take action to end conflict in their own lives and in the lives of others.

The communications task was described as such in the brief: ‘The task is to grow grassroots awareness and active personal engagement with Peace Day, to make this day ubiquitous and as part of our social fabric as Valentines’ Day or Mother’s Day, in fact more so. To be truly effective Peace Day needs to be observed by a huge proportion of the earth’s population on an on-going yearly basis.’

The entries were judged on I)a highly original and inspiring idea II) well executed and III)relevant to its context

with the work also having to demonstrate:

• The power to effect real and positive change in the world through creative thinking and the potential to make a real difference, not just in perceptions, but first and foremost in human behaviours
• Global potential. Your resources may only allow you to implement your ideas in a limited way - within your own region or locality for example, but judges will be looking for ideas that demonstrate the ability, or show the potential to be executed anywhere in the world
• Media neutrality. The idea should be strong enough to be executed in different media and cultural contexts

And the winner of the first White Pencil is Leo Burnett Chicago, for their project Recipeace, a social movement designed to bring people together over a shared meal.

A winning idea in its simplicity and brilliant execution! The campaign had all the winning ingredients: the ‘Big Idea’, savvy copywriting with a catchy play on words, brilliant art direction with visuals that attract and ignite serious thought as well as make you smile while calling for positive engagement.

Most importantly I find, it is an idea that can be implemented by so many so easily reaching a very large audience. Not only can restaurants participate as done so in the campaign, how about schools, company cafeteria, and even just at home with family and friends!

Ready to change the world for the better?
Is your glass half full or half empty???

For more information on subjects from this article, go to the following links: Peace One Day, D&AD, Recipeace