Graduate strikes gold at Cannes Lions 2022

MA Creative Advertising graduate Isabel Snellen has achieved an early career highlight after her agency Happiness Brussels secured a Gold Lion in the Creative B2B category at the 2022 Cannes Lions Awards for their campaign ‘Reduce the Ride’.

The Creative B2B Lions celebrate game-changing creativity and effectiveness in work for products and services that are purchased by professionals on behalf of businesses.

Incredibly, the campaign was a double success, also mopping up a Silver Lion in the PR category.

Happiness’ campaign looked to solve ‘Belgium’s most shameful mobility problem’ – that is that more than 1000 special needs children were sitting on buses to school for between 4-6 hours every day.

Isabel, who worked as a creative on the campaign, told us how the project came together.

“There was a freelancer who was working with me at the time, and one day he held up the front page of the newspaper that was describing what the children were going through and said ‘we’re going to do something about this’.

“We never received a brief from Husk – they’d already used their marketing budget on launching their service and didn’t feel like they were in the place to commission this kind of project.

“But we went for it anyway, and in the end we managed to convince them to go for it!”
 

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Isabel Snellen (@isabelsnellen)

As it turns out, Isabel’s work did wonders for Husk who have since earnt a €26.5 million government contract off the back of the campaign. And, incredibly, the campaign that Isabel helped form was produced at lightning speed.

“I was talking to other winners in Cannes, and they were describing campaigns that had taken them a year. We finished ours in three weeks!”

“I’m so proud to have played a part in this team and solved a problem that was effecting so many children in Belgium.”
 

Watch the campaign video