Creative Futures shortlist announced for The Drum Awards for Social Purpose

This bespoke awards competition, created in partnership with Canon Europe, invited students, junior creatives and marketers to design and submit a bespoke omnichannel marketing campaign plan, including print, that responded to a carefully curated brief for the 178-year-old youth charity YMCA.

A specialist working group of industry leaders from Canon, YMCA, Nutshell Creative, The Strategic Mailing Partnership, Join the Dots, JICMAIL, Latcham, Royal Mail Marketreach and AutLay, developed the competition brief. The experts also hosted a series of workshops on creating data-driven marketing campaigns, designing for digital print, and the story of sustainable print, to support entrants as they developed their ideas across multiple channels and touchpoints.

Judges were specifically looking for evidence of clear strategic, data-driven thinking combined with creativity and innovation, while aligning to the YMCA’s purpose and brand guidelines. Entrants were tasked with showcasing the customer journey throughout the campaign with variations of creative copy and messaging to reflect the core target audience demographics based on the objectives.

Congratulations to the five shortlisted nominees, including:

Henry Plumridge and Ollie Bartlett, Transmission - ‘Limitless’

The ‘Limitless’ campaign idea was built on the idea of diversifying the ‘M’ in YMCA, reimagining the messaging around the infinity sign. This inclusive, ambitious, hopeful, and defiant omnichannel campaign is powered by print and personalization, using OOH, paid social, direct mail and experiential activity to drive online donations via a tool inspired by savings app Moneybox.

Benjamin Mckay and Charlie Wall Palmer, Ravensbourne University – ‘The Block’

The double metaphor for this campaign highlights each brick’s importance in every build and the link between a community and the block they live on or nearby. Using location-specific, data-led solutions, the campaign idea used the power of print with posters and a personalized letter drop inviting the public to donate and create a bespoke ‘block’ sticker with a name or dedication on it.

Bela Pitamber, King's College London – ‘Mirror Moments’

Central to the creative for this campaign idea was a mirror to showcase the fact that YMCA is inclusive of people of all backgrounds. Evoking the feelings of emotional awareness, the campaign utilized OOH ads, experiential, social media and Door Drops to take potential donors on a journey that reflects the ‘moments’ in life that everyone deserves to experience.

Henry Plumridge and Ollie Bartlett, Transmission – ‘This Is Our Battle’

From a single statistic on stress and anxiety levels during World Wars came a handful of imaginative and thought-provoking creative executions – repurposed war poems, letters home and memorial site podiums to connect with the 24–44-year-old audience. The campaign idea utilized direct mail to reimagine a letter home using QR codes to link traffic to the YMCA website.

Martha Omasoro, ACNE London – ‘Home today, home tomorrow’

The big idea for ‘Home today, home tomorrow’ sought to highlight the realities of having a temporary home today, and the possibilities of having a more permanent home tomorrow – both of which can be made possible. Utilizing OOH, print and a series of social media and digital touchpoints, the campaign idea was built on taking a positive empathetic approach by focusing on the positives and the rewards of contributing, helping out and creating impact in the world.

Commenting on the quality of entries, Cathy Bittner, strategic business development manager, Canon Europe, said: “I was just blown away by the standard of entries submitted as part of our Creative Futures competition – such beautiful ideas, unbelievable creativity and thought was put into each and every campaign idea. It was great to see such an overwhelming response to the brief and while every piece of work deserved a shout out, the judges had a tough job on our hands whittling down the entries. Huge congratulations to all those who made the shortlist.”

The Creative Futures winner will be announced during The Drum’s week-long Awards Festival (December 5-9) as part of The Drum Awards for Social Purpose taking place on December 8 2022.