Cannes Lions: Creative Data Winners 2022 /

WeCapital, which works to promote the financial inclusion of low-income women in Mexico, has won the Creative Data Grand Prix for its Data Tienda campaign, created by DDB Mexico, Mexico City.

Mexico’s high rates of violence, poverty, and gender inequality make the country an increasingly hostile place for women. According to El Economista, more than 24 million Mexican women live in poverty and do not have access to bank loans for studying or starting a business, while Forbes reports that 83% of them have no credit history, which means their loan applications are rejected.

But many women have long, unofficial credit histories with local neighbourhood stores from which they have received loans. In order to rebuild the credit histories of low-income women and grant them access to the financial sector, WeCapital tapped into the accounting records of shopkeepers throughout Mexico.

Since this information doesn’t appear in national financial information centres, Data Tienda collected information about unbanked women by analysing their payment behaviour in those neighbourhood businesses and used it to build credit histories. The aim of the campaign was to rebuild the credit histories of more than 35 million low-income women, thus enabling them to obtain microcredits and access bank loans that enable them to become entrepreneurs and achieve financial inclusion, economic autonomy, and empowerment.

The initiative launched in January 2021, when WeCapital set up the datatienda.mx platform and carried out five months of development and testing to enable the proper automation of data. By October that year, the first 1,000 records had been collected on the platform, and the first credit histories were recovered. By December, more than one hundred women had received their first microcredits for their businesses, and the scheme was expanded from Mexico City to other major cities such as Puebla, Guadalajara, Morelia, and Monterrey.

According to the agency, more than 10,300 women have registered to build their credit history since the launch of the platform, and over 2,300 women have received microloans for their businesses and study plans, and Data Tienda captured data from more than 50,000 business owners across the country to financially include thousands of low-income women.

‘Levelling up’ was a theme that emerged during the judging process, said Creative Data jury president Alan Kelly, CCO of Rothco. ‘Creating a level playing field for people all around the world.’ Projects such as The Black Elevation Map for Black & Abroad by Performance Art, Toronto (which won a Gold in the category), Black Characters, by FCB Brasil, São Paulo for Revista Raça (which was awarded a Silver) and Shah Rukh Khan-My-Ad, a campaign for Cadbury Celebrations by Ogilvy, Mumbai, were all great examples of this, said Kelly.

Another theme was ‘the slow re-emergence of fun,’ said Kelly. ‘The Real Airdrop [a campaign by AKQA, São Paulo, for esports company Garena] was simple but we loved it, and we all loved Apologise the Rainbow [by DDB Chicago for Skittles]. [Gold Lion winner] Hetzjaeger had fun at the expense of Nazis which is always a good thing to do’.

The jury was also pleased to see ‘new thinking to solve old problems’, added Kelly, which was evident in the Grand Prix winning Data Tienda campaign. ‘It was so simple but sometimes the simplest ideas are the best. I love “What if?” ideas, and this is just a brilliant “What if?” idea. What if those old notebooks that every shop has could be the solution to a very real and new problem? It raises the bar in this category for everyone to dig deeper and look further – you don’t need an army of data specialists or a huge data budget to solve problems. You just need a curious mind who asks, “What if?”’

The Creative Data Gold Winners were:

Shah Rukh Khan-My-Ad for Cadbury Celebrations by Ogilvy, Mumbai

Antifacist Algorithms for Hetzjaeger by Philipp und Keuntje, Hamburg

The Black Elevation Map for Black & Abroad by Performance Art, Toronto