2023 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

Over 15% of Indigenous communities in Canada still don’t have clean drinking water. But for decades the government has just paid lip service to this issue without action, and the majority of Canadians don’t talk about this issue because their lips
will never touch these contaminated waters.

To draw attention to the issue, Sid Lee and Cheekbone Beauty – an Indigenous-owned cosmetics brand – created a lip gloss set, made using contaminated water from
three Indigenous communities across the country.

These communities - Neskantaga First Nation, Grassy Narrows First Nation and Cowichan Tribes of Vancouver Island - each have a different kind of contamination that is currently affecting their community’s water. These contaminants - E. coli, mercury and lead - were the three “colours” that made up the set.

The campaign was launched in June for Indigenous History Month on social and with beauty influencers - who were each sent a physical set of glosses. The agency then posed a question to the influencers and the public: If you wouldn’t put
toxic lip gloss to your lips, then why should Indigenous communities
have to put toxic water to their lips?

But the campaign didn’t stop at garnering attention for this issue. To try
to bring about meaningful change, it partnered with Sephora Canada, which agreed to give all proceeds from Cheekbone sales during June to Water-First - a non-profit whose mission is to end the water crisis.

This campaign garnered over 36 million impressions, most of them organic in nature; was featured in over 100 publications, including the Toronto Star, National Post, Fashion Magazine, Elle Magazine, CBC Radio One, CTV, Global News, Strategy magazine and many more; and raised over $30,000 for clean water in Canada.

Credits

AGENCY:

Agency: Sid lee
Executive Creative Director: Jeffrey Da Silva
Creative Director: Matt Fraracci
Copywriter: Peter Sreckovic
Art Director(s): Raine Calucag, Sammy Lo
Designer(s): Matthew Beaubien, Priya Mistry
Head of Account Services: Zemina Moosa
Account Supervisor: Jamie Flatow
Head of Production: Amanda Loughran
Executive Producer: Elana Olavesen
Post-Production Producer: Lisa Clarke
Post-Production Director: Andréanne Denis
Post-Production Supervisor: Elizabeth Fedak
Director : Thomas Fortier
Editor: Simon Gosselin
Editor: Mac Thomson
Audio Editor: Noah Dauphinais
Production Coordinator: Morgan Kendall, Hugo Beaupre, Gabriela Salon
PR Manager: Kristel Dupont
PR Coordinator: Linda Chen
Creative Services Director: Kyra Cohen
Sr. Creatives services Manager: Justin Hewitt

CLIENT:

Cheekbone Beauty
Founder: Jenn Harper
EA to the founder: Breann Rogers
Digital strategy & marketing manager: Andrea Pohlmann

Sephora
Project Manager, Marketing: Elizabeth Elliott
Senior marketing manager: Amanda Hungerford
Water First
Director of development and communications: Ami Gopal
Communications & development specialist: Mason Prout