Greece claimed its first-ever Grand Prix at the prestigious Cannes Lions Festival this week, with McCann Greece winning the award thanks to an original idea that turned the food-wasting tradition of throwing rice at Greek weddings into a sustainable solution by repurposing inedible rice from farmers’ surplus.
The team won the Creative Business Transformation Lions top prize among 152 entries in the category with The Wedding Rice, a project rooted in Greek wedding tradition and addressing the challenge of food waste, implemented in partnership with global platform Wikifarmer.
Held annually in the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès in Cannes, France, the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity presents the world’s most prestigious advertising awards, celebrating creativity, effectiveness and innovation in the global advertising, marketing and communication industries.
The Wedding Rice is an innovative initiative that transforms the traditional rice-throwing wedding custom into an act of sustainability, describes Wikifarmer, a global platform that empowers farmers through educating them and offering them direct access to the commercial markets to sell their products at fair prices.
The old, ever-popular Greek tradition of throwing rice at newlywed couples during the Dance of Isaiah procession during the ceremony and also as they exit the church after the wedding, is a move symbolic of well-wishing to the bride and groom for a happy and prosperous married life.
The idea behind the award-winning project was that by utilizing non-commercial rice from Greek producers for the tradition, rather than edible crop, we contribute in reducing food waste while also supporting the local agricultural economy.
Sold directly to wedding planners via Wikifarmer, the initiative boosted rice sales by 260 percent, drove 110 percent more traffic to Wikifarmer’s platform, and sold over 3 tons in the first week.
The campaign addressed food waste and supported local farmers, earning praise from the Greek government as “an excellent initiative to reduce food waste.”
Cannes Lions said the win represented “a new pantheon of Greek creativity” which “could spark a revitalisation for creative work in a country where it’s been in decline for over a decade.”
Creative Business Transformation Lions Jury President, Gugu Mthembu, Chief Marketing Officer, Telkom, South Africa, said The Wedding Rice demonstrated how cultural insights can be the spark of both creativity and business transformation.
“The creativity lay in the strategy’s disarming simplicity – no new infrastructure, no complex strategy or significant go-to-market investment. The transformation came through repurposing a discarded product for new use and in turn unlocking a new revenue stream for their farming partners, ensuring their sustainability through a model that can be replicated and scaled beyond one market,” the business expert observed.
“It’s the first Grand Prix for the Greek market, so it means a lot for the whole country – to believe that we can do it,” said McCann Greece Group Creative Director Panos Pagonis in an Instagram video.
“We are a very small country. We have been through many years of financial crisis. Creativity went down in Greece, so I think this is really going to pump up the industry and give courage to all the creatives to be reborn,” added CEO Panos Parianos as he held the esteemed Cannes Lions award.
