HALF TIME CAMPAIGN
Project: Halftime Campaign
Partners: UN Office For Partnerships,Warner Bros,JC Decaux, Good Relations
The Brief
September 2023 marked the halfway point for the Sustainable Development Goals: The comprehensive plan to eliminate poverty, reduce inequalities and tackle climate change, agreed by 193 world leaders at the UN in 2015.
Seven years from the 2030 deadline, the score wasn’t good, with only 15% of the Goals on track to be achieved. In other words… We were down at halftime.
We partnered with the UN Office For Partnerships to build a campaign urging leaders to recommit to the Goals at this crucial inflection point.
We needed to encourage everyone that the Goals were still the best plan for people and planet, and this was time to double down, not walk away – In spite of the long odds.
The Approach
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We developed a campaign building up to the 78th United Nations General Assembly, framing that moment as ‘Halftime’ in the ‘Greatest match of our lives.’
We leaned into this metaphor, building a set of branding and a suite of language steeped in the world of sports, encouraging everyone, including world leaders, to come together for a ‘Halftime Huddle.’
During the UN General Assembly, we released our commercial. We borrowed the greatest locker-room speech in film history, Al Pacino’s epic ‘Inch By Inch’ monologue from the 1999 Cult Classic, Any Given Sunday.
With permission from Warner Bros and Al Pacino, we recut the scene, introducing newsreel footage from around the world, repositioning the speech in the context of the Global Goals.
We even convinced the great Al Pacino to record a couple of new lines for the occasion.
The campaign concluded with an evening of speeches, music and films, hosted in the SDG Pavilion on the north lawn of United Nations HQ.
Styled as the ‘SDG Halftime Show’, the event was inspired by the lavish productions put on in the halftime break of major sporting fixtures.
Speakers included Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, Helena Gualinga, Goodwill Ambassadors Orlando Bloom and Forest Whitaker, as well as performances from Rocky Dawuni, Angelique Kidjo, Yo-Yo Ma, Amir Siraj, UN Youth Poet Laureate Salome Agbarogi, and Yemi Alade. Backstage, the speakers and performers gathered for a ‘Halftime Huddle’ in support of the Goals.
“The Halftime Campaign asks everyone to come together to achieve the SDGs by 2030. I’m genuinely optimistic that with the right action and political will, in seven years, we could be looking back at one of the greatest second-half comebacks of all time.”
We premiered the campaign film on our channels, and it played at the United Nations, Global Citizen Festival in Central Park, The Reuters Impact Summit and other live events.
We took advantage of donated ad spots, and ran the commercial during halftime of major sporting events on NBC Sports and Sky Sports. The Halftime Show was streamed live around the world on UNTV and reported in major media outlets during coverage of the General Assembly.
We also employed an influencer social media strategy, targeting key icons to share the message. The campaign was shared by David Beckham, Kate Hudson, Alastair Campbell, Coldplay, Jennifer Garner, Alesha Dixon, Forest Whitaker, Nikolaj Coster Waldau, U2, Matthew Modine & Comic Relief.
