An ad featuring an animated llama and the voice of Liam Neeson as God is to be shown in cinemas around the world in an effort to promote the new global goals for sustainable development set to be unveiled by the United Nations in September.
A project masterminded by Richard Curtis, famous for feelgood movies from Notting Hill to Bridget Jones’s diary, aims to spread the word about the goals, which aim to eradicate poverty and injustice and fight climate change, to “seven billion people in seven days”. Backed by Sawa, the global cinema advertising association, campaign organisers claim the new ad, set to be released in September, will be the first truly global cinema ad.
“We want to try to make sure everyone on the planet knows about this to-do list for the planet,” Curtis told an audience at Cannes Lions on Wednesday. It will be “an ad that everyone can understand ... a shared common experience ... I’m hoping that people will watch, laugh, share act.”
With a hashtag already agreed to be #wehaveaplan cinema goers in 30 countries will see the ad which has been created by a team at Aardman, the studios behind Wallace and Gromit. Other “Project Everyone” backers include ad man Sir John Hegarty and two screen stars Freida Pinto and Chiwetel Ejiofor.
Urging the audience of power brokers to act, Curtis said Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales had promised to translate the goals in 293 languages as a way of making them widely understood.
“The Global Goals could be an amazingly important, effective and practical to-do list for the planet. In working together to achieve them we can be the first generation to end poverty, the most determined to fight injustice and inequality, and the last to live with the threat of climate change.”
He compared the aims with the fact that it took five years for the last lot of UN-backed goals – the Millennium Development Goals – to become famous.
John Hegarty said the ad industry gathered in Cannes had a role to play: “If you can engage and entertain people you get them to listen [more] than this constant stream of negativity.”
The goals, set to be agreed by 193 leaders in September, range from improving women’s rights around the world to encouraging the use of renewable resources and ending hunger.
