Plan It Day New York: MTV, Ad Council, Help and United Nations winning solutions

The challenge set by the United Nations (UN) has was to get Americans to support the growing refugee crisis around the world. Issuing the brief to Plan It Day teams, the UN’s Brian Reich said 42,000 people every day around the world are forced to leave their homes. “Everyone has seen the photos of people swimming to save their lives. But this, the disaster porn, is not resonating with Americans,” he said and urged them to think about a creative solution beyond a heart wrenching charity campaign.

The solution from the winning team was to get Americans to really visualise that number through the notion of ‘Lost’. It would enlist Google Maps and when an individual searched for a location the result would return with a “ghosted out” area and a message indicating how many refugees lost their homes that day. A similar activation with Facebook would see a person’s friend list erased.

Help

The brief issued by charity Help was to find a way to send 25 additional students to college in Haiti, where education is an expensive rarity, but helps drive more money back into the country's economy.

In the end winning team offered a solution: "Are you as Smart as a Straight A Student?"

The online trivia game would match the player's scores with those of real Haitian straight A achieving students and compare the two. If the player scored less they would receive a message that told them: "There are people smarter than you who can't afford to go to college" and ask them to donate $1 each to helping send more people through higher education.

Should they beat the score of the student, another message would appear stating "people just as smart as you can't afford to go to college" and also appeal for the same donation to be made.

Discover the Forest - The Ad Council

The Ad Council briefed the teams to help their campaign to use technology to drive children and families to visit and interact with local forests.

In exploring the problem, the teams discussed methods of engaging and incentivising to visit parks and stumbled upon the idea of partnering with Minecraft to allow kids to create their own parks and incentives them to travel to their local parks and forests and explore them by collecting certain items each week and share what they find with their friends.

A competition could also see someone win a trip to Yellowstone park it was suggested as well.

MTV

MTV has chosen to tackle the issue of gender discrimination with a stunt that turns gender norms on their heads in a restaurant setting. Unsuspecting customers will walk in to a restaurant to find doors being held open for men only, waiters will ask men for their order first, and women will be handed the check at the end of a meal. The idea behind the campaign isn’t necessarily to say that these gender norms are right or wrong, but to highlight the fact that they are pervasive in men and women’s everyday lives.

More details about Do It Day can be found at the dedicated website.