Top honours in the Glass category at Cannes went to Cheil Worldwide, Seoul, for Knock Knock, a silent and subtle alert system that wordlessly connects victims of domestic violence with the police.
Inspired by morse code, the Korean National Police Agency service can be accessed when a victim of abuse dials the 112 emergency line. By tapping any two additional numbers, the user prompts a police call handler to share a link that allows them to access the caller’s phone camera and identify their location. A secret chat mode – disguised as a Google search page – is also enabled, so the caller can communicate with the police without arousing the suspicion of their aggressive partner.
Jury president Tea Uglow, founder of Dark Swan Institute, said the initiative was ‘a staggering achievement,’ calling out the fact that this, and all the work her jury awarded, will have a lasting impact beyond the usual campaign cycle.
The Glass category is called the Lion for Change, and Uglow highlighted the commitment it took to implement this new service. She said it was took ‘years and months and hours, an intense relationship with the government and the police in order to develop something that will work, that will save lives, that will punish perpetrators, that will support law change and that actually transforms emergency services.’
She added that this type of work is ‘not something that you can enter into lightly and it’s quite something that that’s the stage Glass has reached: to reach that level of sustainability – as in it’s not going away – and effectiveness in that it will literally save women’s lives.’
The Glass jury struggled to choose their Grand Prix winner, and Uglow made a point of saying there was a wafer thin margin between Knock Knock and the Gold Lion-winning Schoolgirl Newscasters campaign by Impact BBDO, Dubai. In this campaign Pakistani biscuit manufacturer EBM worked with leading news channels to broadcast the news being read by primary-age schoolgirls. The goal was to kickstart a conversation about the country’s limited provision of education for girls and the life-changing impact that access to schools can have.
