2015 Winners & Shortlists

The Brief

We were briefed to raise funds and awareness for cedar conservation in Lebanon. As the voice of the future, the Lebanese youth are the ones who need to get behind conservation efforts. But to help a generation preoccupied with life in one of the Middle East's most vibrant cities to take action, we needed to find a message that would be able to resonate with them.

Creative Execution

For the first time ever, the Lebanese cedar's voice could be heard by the public. And the fact that we were able to create a unique House track through it, meant our conservation message became more relevant to the Lebanese youth than it had ever previously been. Since the start of the project, many other DJs have expressed an interest in the project and we are now collaborating with them on an album. This will allow us to reach out to even more people as the Album will go beyond a single house track and embrace different genres of music, all with the sound of the cedar at its core.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

We found a way to spread our conservation message in a language Lebanese youth could understand - music. We extracted high-frequency rhythms from inside a cedar tree with the help of bioacoustic engineers and gave them to Beirut's top DJs to remix. The result was House track called "3000 years ft Marlene Jaber" (a Lebanese singer who collaborated with us) that could be downloaded to generate funds for cedar conservation. Our goal is to reach $100,000. The track was and is still available on iTunes, Beatport, Soundcloud, Amazon and other music sites.

Results

We launched at 5 of Beirut's most prominent nightclubs, reaching thousands of people within the first weekend. The track received free radio airplay and found its way onto the top stations' playlists, reaching a total listenership of 1.2 million. The story was shared, liked, tweeted about and covered in the media and it became a trending topic throughout Lebanon. Aside from paying the minimum amount for the track, you could donate more money if you wish. Our conservation drive is still in progress, and so far we have had over 10,000 downloads and raised over $38,000 for cedar conservation.