Social Impact Report 2021

Agency: Merkle | Market: Germany
Client: Siemens

Siemens has long seen sustainable development as vital in achieving long-term growth by empowering its customers with more eco-friendly technologies. Siemens wanted to generate broader momentum in awareness of the energy transition, challenge consumers’ perceptions of sustainable consumption and highlight the potential of innovation.

Merkle, a dentsu company, teamed up with Siemens on The Power Reset, a full-length documentary that showcases a town’s carbon-neutral success with the help of Siemens’ smart technologies. The 36-minute documentary, which broadcast on both YouTube and Amazon Prime, challenged consumer perceptions, creating increased relevance around the transition to renewable energy. The documentary powerfully showed that the energy transition is not a distant dream: it is already underway. Wunsiedel, a German municipality that is already 100% carbon neutral and home to 10,000 people, is highlighted in the film. We transformed traditionally business-centric content into a widely engaging film using interviews, archive footage, animated infographics and vox pops. The project shows the local value generated thanks to the courageous vision and cooperation within the region and Siemens’ commitment to sustainability. The Power Reset won a German Brand Award for Excellence in Brand Strategy and Creation. The inspirational story of the town creating an energy blueprint for the world has now accumulated over 250,000 minutes of streaming to audiences. To achieve maximum impact of the film, Merkle created an effective campaign to promote the release using Amazon Ads and will continue the promotion of the project throughout the year.

Agencies: Dentsu Creative Bengaluru
Market: India | Client: Vice World News

The British Museum holds a collection of over eight million culturally and historically significant artefacts and is a destination for visitors from around the world. Few of those who come to view its exhibits know that many of these works were forcibly stolen by the British Empire. Today, restitution advocates from around the world are calling for their return.

Dentsu Creative Bengaluru worked with Vice World News to devise ‘The Unfiltered History Tour’ – a guerrilla interactive tour of the British Museum telling the story of ten looted items currently on display at the museum. Users can take the tour at home or on-site.

This unofficial tour uses Instagram filters to scan and identify life-sized 3D objects in the museum, unfiltering centuries of colonial narrative and providing a platform for underrepresented voices, without any agenda. Users are given an immersive audio-video experience, featuring a comprehensive history of famous artefacts including Egypt’s Rosetta Stone, Ghana’s Akan Drum and Australia’s Gweagal Shield. This is supplemented with extended podcasts available on the Unfiltered History Tour website.

The campaign challenged people’s perceptions about the historical narratives we are taught versus the more complex realities. The work also promoted equality by giving a voice to those who would otherwise be left outside the narrative. So far, the campaign has generated 55,000 website visits, two million video views on TikTok and over 31,000 podcast downloads. With a total of 18 million campaign impressions, ‘The Unfiltered History Tour’ represents a positive step forward in correcting the narrative.

Dentsu Creative Bengaluru’s History Tour has led India’s tally in most of the major award ceremonies, with 19 medals at Spikes Asia 2022, 18 Pencils and a Best of Discipline at The One Show 2022, and eight Pencils at the D&AD Awards.

Agency: Carat
Market: United Kingdom / Client: Vodafone

Building a trusted media landscape is a collective effort, and one that dentsu is actively supporting. In 2020, we worked with Vodafone to launch their Responsible Advertising Charter, an industry-leading initiative to drive ethical, responsible and sustainable media.

The Charter proactively evaluates advertising campaigns and media investment against Vodafone’s purpose and values. It consists of a three-pillar framework that aligns media closer to Vodafone’s purpose and values, enabling proactive and informed investment decision-making.

Alongside the Charter, we developed a survey for media partners with a detailed set of criteria covering the three pillars of responsibility, brand safety and suitability to establish their fit with the values set out in the new Charter.

Partners were scored on a sliding scale and flagged areas of concern as well as areas of best practice, and action areas that can be collaborated on together.

In total, 14 markets and 130 partners were invited to participate at both a global and local level.

Into 2022, with a business-wide focus on Planet credentials, we have worked with Vodafone on a deep dive into sustainability as it pertains to the environment and built out detailed global guidance on how to decarbonise media.

The project provides a comprehensive approach for markets to follow on how to invest more responsibly and sustainably while assessing risk to a company’s values and reputation across platforms.

Agency: dentsu international
Client: Malaria No More / Market: Global

In 2021, we were proud to partner with global NGO Malaria No More UK to launch ‘Draw The Line Against Malaria’. The star-studded creative campaign invites youth from across Africa and the globe to join the movement to end one of the world’s oldest and most deadly diseases. The global integrated campaign is the latest in a three-year pro bono partnership involving creative and media agencies from across the dentsu international network, aimed at ending a disease that kills a child every minute.

The campaign invites people to share the cinematic hero film, directed by acclaimed Nigerian music video director Meji Alabi, which showcases the captivating talent and energy emanating out of the African continent, including Dr Omotola J Ekeinde, Nigerian actress and philanthropist; Osas Ighodaro, Nigerian-American actress and producer; Saray Khumalo, South African explorer; Eliud Kipchoge, Olympic Gold-medallist and marathon world record- holder; Siya Kolisi, Captain of the Springboks, South Africa’s World Cup winning rugby team; and Sherrie Silver, award-winning Rwandan British choreographer.

At the heart of the campaign is a fresh new universal visual language made up of lines, symbols and patterns, the ‘Muundo’ created by acclaimed Nigerian artist, activist and human rights lawyer, Láolú Senbanjo. Each line will create a unique piece of art that is added to a globally crowdsourced mural. The artwork will be presented to world leaders as a collective message of solidarity powered by the people at the Malaria and Neglected Tropical Diseases Summit in June 2022, on the eve of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kigali, Rwanda. The Summit is a milestone moment in the malaria fight and enabler of game-changing political decisions including delivering the commitment to halve malaria across the Commonwealth by 2023.

Over 100 dentsu volunteers from Amsterdam, Cape Town, Copenhagen, Geneva, London, Nairobi and New York worked in close collaboration with a collection of agencies, including the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA), the African Union Commission, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Impact Santé Afrique, Malaria No More UK, RBM Partnership to End Malaria and Speak Up Africa.

The creative and strategy was led by Isobar Amsterdam, with dentsu media agencies iProspect and Carat collaborating to drive media planning across multiple African markets including Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa and Zambia as well as target donor markets including the UK, USA, Japan and Australia. The digital platform was created by Isobar in collaboration with Firstborn.

Daniël Sytsma, Chief Design Officer, dentsu Creative, said: “We worked with creators and makers from across Africa to design this campaign as a movement, one that celebrates the creativity and positivity from a generation that is ready to claim their future. With the Muundo we want to provide young people with the tools and the language to deliver a powerful message.”