How two young Australians won at Cannes

Millie Clout and Bella Hayes from Howatson+Company won silver in the PR category at Young Lions in Cannes this year.

They won with their work, Pay Zero Sale, helping people contribute to getting to net zero.

Hayes said the two decided to take the first few hours after they were briefed to digest it separately and brainstorm.  

“We then came together and luckily had very similar thoughts, insights and problems we were actually trying to address,” Hayes told AdNews. 

“We had a decent sleep knowing which direction we would take. The first couple of rounds in the national comp we went back and forth a bit on what we wanted to do but this time we committed really early and just ran with it.” 

For the two women, the 24 hour brief concept appeared daunting initially, but they soon discovered what they could achieve with their commitment to the idea. 

“We woke up early and did a few hours work in our Airbnb then went to the competition area to work,” said Hayes. 

“The internet didn’t work for half the day (minor inconvenience) but knowing our approach early on, enabled us to knuckle down (and finish earlier than submission time!).” 

Clout, PR manager and Hayes, PR executive, were second to present on the Thursday morning and were pleased with how their presentation was received.

“When it got to the announcement day, nerves were at an all time high. We screamed so loud when we saw our piece of work up on the big screen for second place,” said Hayes. 

Clout said it was great to be recognised the first time the PR comp has ran in Australia, and to go on to get a silver was surreal. 

“Despite being such a young company, Howatson was completely behind us and really helped us get there,” said Clout.  

The idea for Pay Zero Sale, came about after a brief outlining EcoTree and its need to appeal to a new audience – individuals.  

EcoTree is a green-tech company that rewards people simply for buying trees, bringing everyone into sustainable forestry to help build a greener future.

Clout said this brief brought up a bigger issue regarding how individuals don’t often know the best way to contribute to getting to net zero, despite their best efforts. 

“They’ll usually opt for the things they can physically do like recycling and remembering their keep cups. They don’t know that EcoTree can make helping the environment incredibly easy,” she said. 

This became the impetus for Hayes’ and Clout’s insight. Clout said figuring out how to help is hard, but what isn’t difficult is the way e-com has been inbuilt into social media to encourage impulse buying. 

“You get served with an ad, and within two or three clicks, your info has been infilled, and you’ve processed the purchase through Apple Pay,” said Clout. 

“It’s too easy. So we realised we needed to put a carbon credit purchase in the same field as that kind of purchase.” 

The pair landed on Pay Zero Sale as it positions carbon credits as the ultimate impulse buy.  

The idea was to do this by partnering with Patagonia to hack Black Friday, and put EcoTree’s carbon credits right in front of bargain hunting, climate conscious consumers, notes Clout. 

“We knew that Patagonia always do a stunt on Black Friday and are very anti-promotions during this time,” she said. 

“We wanted to grab onto this, and take advantage of consumer behaviours during Black Friday, to create a campaign that’ll grab both the consumer’s and media’s attention.”    

Clout said the hack gave EcoTree a trojan horse to cut through media into realms it otherwise wouldn’t have – news and mainstream.   

“We’d amplify through social media by seeding credits to influencers so they can show off their Black Friday ‘haul’," she said.

Entrants to the Young Lions must be 30 years or under and in a team of two. 

The first step in submitting a piece of work to Cannes is participating in the Australian Young Lions competition, said Clout. 

The final Australian round was a 24 hour brief response, and the following day Clout and Hayes found out they were heading to Cannes to represent Australia. 

“We celebrated with the Howatson+Company team who have been our biggest supporters through the whole process,” said Clout.