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A global mission to tell seven billion people in seven days about the United Nation’s new goals for sustainable development has been adopted by South African agencies Cinemark and Popcorn. Project Everyone is the brainchild of British filmmaker and humanitarian, Richard Curtis (Love Actually, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill) and will be unveiled at the Cannes Festival of Creativity in France next week. The cinema ad was conceived and developed by doyen of British advertising, Sir John Hegarty, reports Glenda Nevill.
“The more famous these global goals are, and the more widely they are understood by everyone, the more politicians will take them seriously, finance them properly, refer to them frequently and make them work. This is a mission for humanity, unified goals that resonate with everyone, everywhere… Help us tell everyone!” Cinemark’s Yvonne Diogo told The Media Online.
The UN in front of 193 world leaders will unveil the new global goals for sustainable development on 25 September. But to make them famous, a global campaign is needed. Enter the Screen Advertising World Association (SAWA) and the first ever global cinema advertising campaign. The partnership is designed to use the power of cinema as a medium to engage the global cinema audience to join the mission to end poverty, injustice and climate change.
“The Global Goals could be an amazingly important, effective and practical to-do list for the planet. In working together to achieve them we can be the first generation to end poverty, the most determined to fight injustice and inequality and the last to live with the threat of climate change,” Curtis said.
“But their predecessor, the Millennium Development Goals, snuck into the world in 2000 and weren’t really famous until 2005. What we hope to achieve with the Global Goals campaign is, in movie language, a huge opening weekend – we want to have a Star Wars / Titanic / Avengers type of opening for the Goals. If we achieve that, we’ll be a big step closer to the goals themselves being effective. Our partnership with SAWA in the First Ever Global Cinema Ad is a fantastic opportunity to help us do this,” he said.
Cinemark, as a member of SAWA, has embraced the campaign. “The aim is to establish best practice in a pursuit to ensure sustainability and relevance for cinema as a medium. So when the need to educate the masses about the UN’s Global Goals was identified, cinemas worldwide recognised that the medium’s high impact would be more than well aligned with the objective at hand,” said Diogo. “Also, considering the unprecedented global box office success for 2015, the time could not be more opportune to capitalise on cinema audiences. Also cinema is uniquely placed as the only advertising medium to have a worldwide trade organisation dedicated to Cinema Advertising (SAWA), thus the campaign can be coordinate globally through the various Cinema Advertising Company members,” she said.
Diogo said the campaign would have a national reach in South Africa. “Cinemark represents 65% of the cinema footprint [in South Africa] so the ad #WEHAVEAPLAN will be screened on every screen in our stable. Our sister companies within Primedia such as broadcasting will also play a role. The Global Goals affect each and every local resident, so members of the media at large – be it print or online – will be engaged to amplify the message,” she said.
#WEHAVEAPLAN will become the first ever cinema ad campaign to screen in 30 countries. The cinema ad will be mixed in Dolby Atmos, Dolby’s award-winning sound technology. Dolby Atmos places and moves sounds anywhere in the theatre, including overhead, to make audiences feel as if they are inside the movie or advert that they are watching.
“We are tremendously excited to announce this fantastic partnership In what will go down in history as not only an amazing campaign but also a game changer for the cinema advertising medium and the biggest undertaking SAWA has ever done,” said general manager of SAWA, Cheryl Wannell.
“Through SAWA we are able to co-ordinate Project Everyone as the first ever global cinema campaign demonstrating the power and relevance of the Cinema advertising medium.”
