Round 1 of 8: September

Judge: Markus Lindsjö

ECD at Uncle Unicorn (Formerly CP+B Scandinavia)

Markus' Comments:

Round One, the results.

To start with: To win Gold you need to solve the brief AND present not only a good or great idea, you have to present an amazing idea! There are several good, and a couple great, ideas in this round, unfortunately the amazing ones are missing. So I have decided not to hand out any Gold.

Let me explain why.

Many of you have put lots of work in presenting your ideas. And that’s great. Unfortunately, the majority didn’t spend as much time on really understanding the brief and therefor missed the opportunity to present relevant solutions. Many ideas were clever, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it solved the brief.

The problem to be solved is a business problem (like most advertising problems actually are). Companies choose not to sponsor women’s football simple because they don’t consider it as a good investment.

The ideas that were awarded, were manly ideas that might get companies to realise that there is potential in sponsoring women’s football. And ideas that focused on the fact that sponsoring is not only about logo exposure (that’s the old way of looking at sponsorships), it’s about what a sponsorship says about the sponsor.

I was also a bit surprised that many of the ideas, were big global ideas, trying to solve the whole problem. That is of course nothing wrong with that, but I do think that creating ideas for a local team or a local market is an easier way to start. This is just a note, and not something that has had any effect on the scores.

Two kinds of ideas were extra hard to award:

1. Ideas about getting people and potential sponsors to realise how unfair the current situation is. I don’t believe that’s a strong pitch, since pity is not a reason for investment.

2. Ideas that started with: We decided to team up with “Nike”, “Coca Cola”, “Apple” or some other “global brand”. Why? Well If that was easy, then I guess there is no real problem.

What I would like you all to bring along in the coming rounds and also in your professional life for the future is: Find the real problem to be solved. Only then there is a possibility to do amazing work.

Thanks, and best of luck!

//Markus Lindsjö, ECD Uncle Unicorn