2022 Winners & Shortlists

Background

Wildfires are more destructive than ever. And in 20 years, scientists predict they’ll be six times larger. The Middle East is a region known for its fuel-based economy and almost inexistent sustainable culture. So, we decided to do something to get people to care about climate change and wildfires when it’s not really part of the region’s agenda.

Describe the creative idea (40% of vote)

To get people to care about wildfires and climate change, we subverted one of the season’s most traditional ceremonies and burnt the one tree people love to see: the Christmas Tree. During our traditional tree lighting ceremony, Mall of the Emirates stunned mall visitors with a digital carbon-neutral tree, which lit beautifully and, all of a sudden, burnt to ashes. The lighting ceremony was treated like a show that used storytelling, 4D audio and a large-scale, special-built, carbon-neutral tree to deliver a powerful message.

Describe the execution (40% of vote)

After we had the idea to use the mall's Christmas tree to shed light on wildfires and climate change, we had a design-led task which was: "how do we do this?" Design and form were of utmost importance because we were essentially going to replace the mall's traditional Christmas tree so it had to be visually striking. And aside from this, the tree would be the canvas for our spectacle and the means to take our message to people, hence we had a huge task at hand. After 6 weeks of a lot of work, we came up with an 8-meter tree-like structure that used reused LED screens and recycled metal to build a behemoth of a tree. The screens had high definition and allowed us to play our 2-min show beautifully, stunning viewers during inauguration day and making our spectacle the talk of the town during Christmas.

List the results (20% of vote)

The results were very impressive and exceeded our expectations, helping the brand reach its objectives. The Christmas Wildfire was watched by more than 2.2M people. 23,000 of them pledged to a more sustainable life and we’re currently planting 23,000 trees on their behalf, making a real difference to the planet. The online video and the media coverage helped us to achieve even more impactful results with 120M impressions and $1,800,000 in earned media. And even more, according to Google Trends 2021, “Wildfire” Google searches increased 27% during the period of the campaign, proving that the idea helped to bring climate change back to the conversation in a month when no one is particularly talking about that.