Former UGA student wins at Cannes Lions Festival

Gilad Kat, as pictured at the
2005 Cannes Lions Festival.

Gilad Kat, the communication planning director at MediaCom Israel, was part of an award-winning team that won a Lion at the Cannes Lions International Festival for Creativity this year. Kat did his doctoral work through Grady College while attending UGA. This is the second Cannes Lions win for Kat, as he was part of the award-winning 2005 Tel Aviv team that took home the Media Lions Grand Prix for their work in helping Proctor & Gamble launch a laundry detergent, "Biomat." 


MediaCom Israel's winning submission, "Danger! Dog Poop," was a campaign created for the non-profit organization Mokesh, The Coalition for a Mine-Free Israel, to incite government action to remove landmines on Israel's borders. "Our insight was that we needed to identify an emotional equivalent to stepping on a landmine - something that made life difficult, albeit on a smaller scale. Our solution was dog poop. Just as no-one wants to step on a landmine, you don’t want to step in dog poop either. This is even recognised by Hebrew slang - 'Mokesh' - meaning both landmine and dog poop," MediaCom creatives wrote in their brief.

Gilad Kat speaks with students at the 2012 Cannes Lions Festival.
 This marks his second Cannes Lions win.

 Efforts included transforming a Tel-Aviv street into an "urban minefield," complete with real dog poop and warning signs about explosives. In addition, real minefield accident victims were near the scene to help illustrate the dangers of minefields.


 The campaign became popular in the press, as Israeli citizens signed petitions for decreasing landmines. In addition, the campaign created policy change, as it was backed by 60 percent of members in Israeli parliament and its earned media value was more than 26 times the original investment. "The process of removing landmines from Israel’s border areas has now started and 90 percent of the 1m landmines that scar the landscape will be removed in the coming years," according to the brief.


For more information on the MediaCom Israel campaign, click here.


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