Following up on four gold-winning campaigns at the annual Luum Awards, we catch up with Mattias and Stefan Ronge, CCOs Edelman EMEA.
Among the four winner campaigns for the agency were: ‘The Cost of Inequality’ for Fondations Des Femmes from Edelman France, ‘#RealVoicesofPride’ for the FELGTB from Edelman Spain, #Mynameis – The Fuh-Net-Ic Filter for Race Equality Matters from Edelman UK and Bodyright for the UNFPA, also from Edelman UK.
Tell us about the inspiration behind the campaigns and how they evolved creatively.
Our four winning campaigns at this year’s Luum awards were all very different. They each leaned into different elements of the creative and marketing mix – some were social first, others had more traditional advertising elements too and some led with innovation at their core.
What ran underneath all these winning ideas though is The Edelman Action Method; the creative process embedded throughout the organization, which encourages our teams to arrive at action-oriented solutions for business and client problems.
Branding used to be about saying – now it’s about doing. So for every brand, we ask: Where is the human being in this? How does this humanity play into culture?
What is the statement that will lead a brand to driving action? Asking these questions helps us get to actionable ideas – like creating a sharable phonetic filter to help us value and achieve pronouncing people’s names correctly, or launching a new copyright symbol for the human body on social media, to highlight that copyrighted materials currently have more rights online than we do over our own images.
What were some of the challenges in putting the campaigns together for launch?
We set out to make real, tangible change when doing action-based work with clients. This comes with many challenges. It’s our job to help brands take that risk. Lean into darkness, tap into cultural tensions and make a business decision that has real weight. Look at it this way – without darkness, their brand will not stand in real light. It takes guts.
What were the results in terms of your client and your agency’s KPIs?
On the creative awards scene, measurement is becoming increasingly important, and rightfully so. Not long ago, everyone relied on one metric – reach – to demonstrate the impact of earned campaigns. In our four winning cases, we worked closely with our audience and platform experts to actively invite the audience into the campaign.
This meant we were able to go beyond reach, and towards to participation. The Cost of Inequality, Bodyright, The Fuh-net-ic Filter, #RealVoicesofPride – their engines were people joining, doing, spreading. We empowered these audiences to be change makers and ambassadors.
What was a peer campaign amongst the award entrants that you liked? (share link)
A good purpose campaign is made great when action is at the core. Talking about critical issues is important, but taking meaningful action towards change sets the work apart. On top of that, ideas with true creative and original thinking behind them are the ones that win my heart.
When brands land on a beautifully unique, yet simple, solution to a particular challenge, you can’t help but admire it. For me, two campaigns that exemplified that level of creative thinking in this year’s Luum list were:
Tough Turban by Zulu Alpha Kilo
Morning After Island by Ogilvy
In terms of the creative ad industry, as we emerge from the pandemic, are there any particular trends you’re seeing in the market?
What the world experienced during the pandemic had never been seen before in modern times. Facts we took for granted were challenged and our behaviors were changed. Whatever the ask, be it within travel, alcohol, sports, internal comms, the creative solve might look a little different, because people’s minds have shifted a little.
In our industry, we see 10,000 case studies with the phrase, ‘during the pandemic’. This doesn’t mean they are anything alike, just that they have the same starting point. The way a campaign will draw on the pandemic to connect to a client’s brand, community and the broader culture will differ wildly.
Why do you think awards such as the Luum Awards are important for the industry?
You should always know what great looks like, and the creative industry is no exception. We need inspiration, envy, the sense that we can do even better. Every agency has a shared sense of quality and without awards some places could go on thinking they are great when they are actually mediocre.
Without awards, we would lose our ability to become better faster, to meet the shortcomings of the brands we work with and the audiences we’d like to reach.
Campaign Credits
Bodyright
Creative director: Mattias Ronge (EMEA CCO), Stefan Ronge (EMEA CCO), Jamie Cordwell
Executive Creative Director: Jamie Cordwell
Creative Director: Esin Cittone
Copywriter & Art Director: Simon Lublin (ACD Copywriter), Martin Noreby (ACD Art Director)
Account Director: Frederica Saunders
Senior Account Manager: Jodie Palmer
Account Exec: Max Tyson
The Cost of Inequality
Creative Director: Mattias Ronge (EMEA CCO), Stefan Ronge (EMEA CCO)
Executive Creative Director: Lauren Haberfield
Copywriter & Art Director: Margaux Gutmann (Art Director), Helene Lucas (Copywriter)
Coordinator of practices: Rama Sall
#Mynameis – The Fuh-Net-Ic Filter
Creative Director: Mattias Ronge (EMEA CCO), Stefan Ronge (EMEA CCO)
Executive Creative Director: Jamie Cordwell
Copywriter & Art Director: Simon Lublin (ACD Copywriter), Martin Noreby (ACD Art Director)
Executive Director: Satyen Dayal
#RealVoicesofPride
Creative Director: Mattias Ronge (EMEA CCO), Stefan Ronge (EMEA CCO)
Creative director: Felipe Braz Costa (Spain)
Creative: Helena Centeno Crespo
Creative: Maripaz Pascual Gandía
Graphic Designer: David Pastor
Creative Retoucher: Joao Cavalcante
This is part of a series of interviews done in collaboration with the Luum Awards. To learn more or enter the awards, go here.
