CANNES — While the controversy over NBC’s Megyn Kelly‘s interview with Sandy Hook denier Alex Jones raged, a powerful campaign for Sandy Hook Promise against gun violence was one of the first big winners at Cannes Lions.
The commercial, titled “Evan” and conceived by BBDO New York, won a Silver Lion on Saturday night. The dramatic video aims to prevent gun violence before it starts.
It tells the story of what seems to be a budding high school romance, but the real, darker story is unfolding in the background, where another student exhibits signs of dangerous behavior.
When the short film was released last December, it immediately went viral and attracted wide media attention because it captured the shock of a school shooting while demonstrating how ea sy it is to miss warning signs, that were there in the video the entire time.
“Evan” has garnered more than 150 million views and billions of media impressions, with a PR campaign spearheaded by Dini von Mueffling Communications.
It was made for the non-profit Sandy Hook Promise, founded by relatives of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting of 2012, who want to teach more people to “know the signs.” They say 80 percent of school shooters told someone of their violent plans before taking action.
“When you don’t know what to look for, or can’t recognize what you are seeing, it can be easy to miss warning signs or dismiss them as unimportant. That can lead to tragic consequences,” Sandy Hook Promise co-founder Nicole Hockley, who lost her son Dylan in the Sandy Hook shooting, has previously said.
On the same night the first big Grand Prix went to Clemenger BBDO Melbourne for “Meet Graham” a road safety campaign that terrifyingly imagined what humans would look like if our bodies evolved to withstand car crashes.
Graham was created with help from a trauma surgeon and accident researchers who studied the effects of road accidents on the human body, and he is meant to show how vulnerable we are behind the wheel.