BUSAN, SOUTH KOREA — IMPACT BBDO has once again raised the bar in creative social impact campaigns, securing the prestigious Grand Prix of the Year at MAD STARS 2024 for its work with UN Women, “Child Wedding Cards.” This win builds upon the agency’s impressive performance at last year’s MAD STARS, where its “Schoolgirl Newscasters” campaign garnered two Grands Prix.
“Child Wedding Cards” has been making headlines globally, having previously won the Grand Prix for Good at the 2024 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. While Ali Rez, Chief Creative Officer at IMPACT BBDO for Middle East, North Africa, and Pakistan, expressed his excitement about the award, he more importantly recognized its significance for UN Women, the teams involved, and the global attention it brings to the issue of child marriage. “MAD STARS is a very tough show to win at, and winning Grand Prix of the Year is quite the ultimate recognition,” he said.
The campaign took a daring approach on a shoestring budget of less than $1500. IMPACT BBDO bypassed traditional advertising channels and directly sent fictional wedding invitations designed by children to Pakistani lawmakers. Shiny Toy Guns directed and produced the campaign film, which shows the creation process of these wedding cards. The faceless children, seen painting and drawing the invites, evoke a powerful sense of innocence and vulnerability. The music, composed by Zohaib Kazi at Karma Kolectiv, adds a fitting and emotional element to the films.
Deeply ingrained in Pakistani tradition, these “wedding cards” served as a stark reminder of the disturbing reality of child marriage in Pakistan, which has the sixth-highest number of child brides in the world.
As a result, lawmakers held on to these impactful cards and pledged their support against child marriage in a series of videos. This initiative reached over 25 million people and has already spurred legislative changes in both the National Assembly and the Shariat Court.
Ali told adobo Magazine, “This project has furthered social conversation around this taboo topic and spurred lawmakers to speak up against it. The cards have been held up in active government sessions, which directly influences how laws are tabled and passed.”
When asked how he creates a work environment at IMPACT BBDO that encourages unconventional thinking and bold ideas, Ali replied, “I’m so glad you used the word ‘bold’ because that is literally our philosophy on how we approach all briefs. We ask ourselves the tough question of whether a solution is bold enough to solve the problem at hand, to stand out, to be remembered. At IMPACT BBDO, fearless thinking is encouraged, as is the belief that there is no such thing as ‘too crazy.’”
“Child Wedding Cards” has been a powerful force for change, even at the national level. This isn’t the first time IMPACT BBDO has leveraged creativity to drive social progress, with “Schoolgirls Newscaster” and “Newspapers Inside the Newspaper” as prime examples. Yet, some creative leaders argue that it’s not the responsibility of advertising agencies to change the world.
Ali disagrees. He elaborated, “We’ve been quite fortunate to have partnered with UN Women for the last seven years, and it is a yearly goal for us to work on a high-impact project that serves society. This helps us find a good balance in the use of creativity to not just solve business problems but societal ones as well. The role of an agency is to solve the briefs it gets, and sometimes we get briefs that ask for social or legislative change.”
adobo Magazine is an official media partner of MAD STARS 2024.
