The Drum launches Do It Day challenging marketers & agencies to change the world in 24 hours with backing of Asda & Havas
If you had 24 hours to make the world a better place, what would you do?
Later this year some of the world’s leading brands, agencies and media owners including Asda and Havas helia will be joining The Drum to take on that very challenge in a day – and we want you to join this global marketing movement too.
Inspired by our last two successful The Drum Live events in which we produced a magazine in 24 hours, we’re launching Do It Day – a day in which creative individuals, groups and businesses come together to show that marketing can achieve something amazing within an unreasonable time-limit.
From radical business innovations to solving problems for charity, all those taking part will be attempting to achieve something that improves the world – or their own world – in some way.
Asda is one of the brands that is taking up the challenge. Dom Burch, senior director of marketing innovation and new revenue at Asda Media Partnerships, said: “We’re keen to understand whether people can come up with better solutions to some of the problems that we historically face.
“We’re also up for funding that idea to not just produce a product in one day but actually then take it onto the next stage. So we’ll be looking to give people a bit of financial help to do that if they haven’t got financial means. But also we’ve got offices in central London which could potentially house a small team if they needed office space for six months or a year just so they could get on with developing it.”
The first step is to plan out the challenges that we aim to answer, and that will happen on Plan It Day, set to take place in the first week of September.
There brands will present their challenges in the form of marketing briefs and teams will pitch ideas for how they would solve them in a day.
A panel of judges will then determine which ideas we will attempt to tackle at Do It Day in November. The Drum will be hosting exciting events in London and New York City, but Do It Day aims to be a truly global movement with participants from around the globe sharing their progress online at thedrum.com and over social media.
Among the agencies already signed up is Havas helia, which will be attempting to illustrate that intelligent use of data can bring about change.
“We believe that more meaningful connections between brands and consumers can only be made by knowing the customer better. This journey begins with data and leads to creative and meaningful customer communications,” says its group chief marketing officer Tracey Barber. “That's why we want to support the initiative. We will help the teams respond to the Plan It Day challenges by putting data at the heart of their solutions.”
Over the weeks ahead, The Drum will be revealing more about the event details, the brands and agencies involved and what they are planning to achieve. But for now, it’s over to you. What will you do in a day to make the world a better place?
Brands, agencies and all those empowered by the possibilities of setting aside one day to do something amazing can find out more about taking part by contacting Patrick King – patrick.king@thedrum.com. More details can also be found on the Do It Day website.