4 billion people were made visible by 3 words / what3words "3 WORDS TO ADDRESS THE WORLD"

The problem

75% of the world's people live within an incomplete, confusing, and inadequate address system. About 4 billion people are effectively invisible: unable to report crimes, receive deliveries, get aid, or exercise their rights as citizens, all because they have no address. CEO Chris Sheldrick ran into this problem while working as a music event organizer, struggling to get bands and equipment delivered to the right loading docks and entrances at big venues. He tried GPS coordinates, but drivers would end up in the wrong place just by swapping two digits. He quickly realized that human beings simply aren't built to remember 18-digit codes.

The insight

A mathematician friend came up with the idea of dividing the earth into 3-meter squares, and linguist Jack Waley-Cohen suggested using easy-to-remember words instead of numbers. Words, not numbers. The entire globe was divided into 57 trillion squares, each 3 meters by 3 meters, and each one was given an address made of three ordinary words—something like "karaoke.novice.doing." Judge Ben Jones (CTO of AKQA) said it "solves a massive human problem with beautiful simplicity." By using words instead of coordinates, it achieves what you could call human-friendly precision. Simplicity, and words—something people can relate to, easily remember, and that have been used for as long as civilization has existed.

The idea

They divided the earth into 57 trillion squares, each 3 meters by 3 meters, and assigned each one a random combination of three words. They built an app and an API and made it free for anyone to use. "what3words is essentially as accurate as GPS coordinates, but it's a human-friendly system that gives people information they can remember and communicate." Nomadic families in Mongolia, post offices in Africa, emergency services, delivery companies—Jones said it was "already out there working, saving lives." The product itself was the campaign.

What happened

In 2015, it won the Innovation Grand Prix at Cannes. Jury president Nick Law (Global CCO of R/GA) called it "the best body of work I've judged at Cannes." There was reportedly heated debate among the judges. Nick Law revealed that there had been discussion over whether a Grand Prix winner needed to be "creative." But in the end, the result was clear. That same year it also won at The Tech Awards 2015, receiving $50,000, and was named Geospatial Startup of the Year 2015.

Afterthought

I really love the question "Is this creative?" It's not an ad. But it won the Grand Prix. Nick Law said that "a creative culture brave enough to imagine a better future is what reshapes industries and the world." I think that moment when Cannes recognized the creativity of a product itself was the moment the advertising industry declared it wanted to be on the side of making change happen, not just reacting to it. That was 2015. Not even ten years ago. But I don't want to forget the courage of that moment.

Awards

• Cannes Lions Grand Prix 2015

Featured in

• The People Who Invented Words That Didn't ExistFive projects that had to design a notation system before they could write a single line of copy.

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