Creativity leads to innovation and innovation leads to progress

Creativity can and is driving improved returns for shareholders, people and the planet.

Kimberlee Wells: ‘Creativity leads to innovation and innovation leads to progress’. Picture: Arsineh Houspian

It’s a long held belief of mine that creativity, harnessed correctly, can be a powerful accelerant for shareholder value and driving positive social change.

A sentiment echoed by Simon Cook, CEO of Cannes Lions when, in partnership with the UN, he announced the addition of the Sustainable Development Goals Lions in September 2017.

Since that time, the category has attracted and assessed over 3000 examples of brands, NGOs and creative agencies acting in service of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals Agenda. From challenging cultural taboos, influencing government, providing last-mile logistics or indeed pathways out of poverty, brands are showing up with system-level creative solutions to tackle the world’s most pressing problems.

But before we get into the how, let’s quickly cover off the what.

The Sustainable Development Goals or Global Goals, are a collection of 17 interlinked calls for action designed to be a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all by 2030.” They were established in 2015 by the UN General Assembly and adopted by all member states at a historic UN Summit.

This year, I had the pleasure of overseeing the judging of the 2022 SDG Lions as jury president. Pleasingly, the work we reviewed represented actions as the goals intended. A cross-selection of ideas with equal interest in the areas of People, Planet and Prosperity. But if we dig a little further, it is clear that some goals are more popular than others. Let’s look at People first.

A total of 13 per cent of the entries centred on good health and wellbeing, 11 per cent tackled gender equality and yet just 2 per cent had put focused effort into moving the needle on hunger.

Research tells us just 10 food companies control almost every large food and beverage brand in the world. While they are making progress on responsible consumption and production, it would be inspiring to see them also come together to tackle the underlying impediments of hunger, such as partnering with rural and small-scale producers, and applying greater pressure to political leadership on fair and equitable distribution.

Goodie Box, an idea out of New Zealand, sought to reduce the 157,000 tonnes of food that go to waste, while improving access to food for the one in five Kiwis who can’t afford a proper meal. In redesigning the humble takeaway box, they have come up with a solution to intercept diners to take their leftovers with them and in doing so, make a donation to feed those less fortunate than themselves.

Turning our attention to the Planet, 11 per cent of entries centred on brands improving responsible consumption and prod-uction. When Tide discovered 90 per cent of the energy in the laundry process can be eliminated if people didn’t use hot water, they went on a mission to convince everyone to simply #TurnToCold. Through amplifying product usage in a highly entertaining fashion, they brought together “cold” pop culture icons like wrestler “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and rapper and actor Ice-T to make “cold calls” convincing others to #TurnToCold. By their metrics, this saved the environment over one billion kilograms of CO2 and generated a sales lift of +39 per cent.

Ikea created a Trash Collection fostering greater awareness on how their products can be repurposed while promoting their spare parts business. And Pinatex partnered with Dole, one of the largest pineapple plantations in the world, to significantly scale the production and supply chain for pineapple leather – a sustainably sourced textile with closed-loop production.

In contrast, just 1 per cent of entries attached themselves to generating affordable and clean energy, 2 per cent to clean water and 3 per cent to our oceans. According to the World Health Organisation, over two billion people live in water-stressed countries. In contrast, the global bottled water market size was valued at $US283.01bn in 2021 by Fortune Business Insights.

While the challenges of meeting clean water standards are daunting, particularly when conflict, violence and instability can derail efforts, the guidelines and targets proposed by the UN suggest it is not impossible.

Creativity is our weapon to re-imagine, rethink, reinvent and re-purpose solutions in service of sustainability. Creativity leads to innovation and innovation leads to progress.

The Missing Chapter, the Grand Prix winner of the 2022 Sustainable Development Goals Lion, serves as a beacon to boards, marketing and creative communities the world over that progress is possible. By tackling a cultural taboo, Whisper, the leading feminine hygiene brand in India, overturned a century-old education system to ensure period education became a compulsory part of the school curric-ulum. Today in India, 23 million girls drop out of school due to misinformation about menstruation. Whisper’s brilliant creative solution helped combat this statistic for future generations of girls.

As a collective body of work, all the entries in the Sustainable Development Goals Lions send a clear and reassuring signal that creativity can and is driving improved returns for shareholders, people and the planet. Those brands stepping up now to acknowledge, commit and communicate their role in creating solutions for the future will be the beneficiaries in the years to come.

Kimberlee Wells is CEO at TBWA\Melbourne and TBWA\Adelaide