MARS | THE LION'S SHARE | 2019
Changing the ad industry's exploitation of animals, using the power of advertising itself / MARS "THE LION'S SHARE"
Animals are some of advertising's biggest earners, yet they're never paid a cent. The industry decided to fix that contradiction itself. Winner of the Grand Prix in the SDGs category at Cannes Lions 2019.
The problem
The advertising industry pours $118 billion a year into ads featuring animals, yet not a single dollar goes to the animals themselves. Of the ten animals most commonly used in ads, nine are endangered species. The person who noticed this contradiction was Christopher Nelius, a director at FINCH who had spent years on set watching it happen.
The insight
Animals are talented performers for advertising, but the payment side has always stayed at zero. What Rob Galluzzo of FINCH designed wasn't a request for donations—it was simply "payment that's owed."
The idea
Every time an animal appears in an ad, the advertiser contributes 0.5% of their media spend to THE LION'S SHARE fund. The money raised goes toward wildlife conservation through the UNDP. Mars joined as a founding partner, with Clemenger BBDO handling the creative work. As Sir David Attenborough put it, "a small difference can make an unprecedented difference."
What happened
The campaign won the Grand Prix in the SDGs category at Cannes Lions 2019, as well as a D&AD Impact White Pencil. Within a year of launch, more than 50 brands including Cartier and Gucci had joined, and the fund had already helped achieve zero elephant poaching, the purchase of 260,000 hectares of rainforest, and the restoration of 5.7 million square kilometers of coral reef.
Afterthought
This isn't an ad made to sell more ads—it's an ad that changes the advertising industry itself. It built, from the inside, a system for actually paying animals for their work. And what makes it so compelling is that it doesn't deal in wishful thinking, but hits you with numbers that are genuinely achievable.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Grand Prix 2019
