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By Amy Houston | Senior Reporter

June 28, 2022 | 3 min read

According to Kyiv-based creative agency Banda, the world is now 22 times less interested in news about Ukraine since Russian troops invaded the country back in February. To continue keeping the war on top of social feeds and publishers’ homepages, the team devised a project asking media buyers to donate space.

Back in the spring, alongside the Ukrainian government, Banda launched a huge project focusing on the nation’s resilience. Its goal was to make bravery the country’s biggest cultural export. The campaign was supported by 19 countries (including Canada, Poland, Germany, Italy, France, Netherlands, Great Britain, Spain and the US) and 140 cities over the world.

As the war continues, the number of interactions with Ukrainian news on social networks (according to Banda) has decreased from 109m to 4.8m. How could the agency grab the world’s attention again? The answer: Cannes Lions.

From its stand, Banda highlighted a simple QR code that led to a landing page, where media owners could request layouts of assets from the Brave campaign in the required format to have them distributed on digital out-of-home (DOOH) screens around the globe.

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“It is a big moment for Ukraine. The whole world is now looking at Ukraine, and for us this is a unique opportunity to show how strong, brave, creative and open we are,” said Pavel Vrzheshch, co-founder at Banda.

“We count on this attention and are grateful for international support. It will help Ukraine to gain its most important victory – victory in war.”

It’s not just media owners and buyers that can support this campaign – the agency is encouraging everyone with a social media account to share the message far and wide.

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While at Cannes, the agency also scooped a Silver Lion in the Design category for the Chornobyl disappearing logo project. Speaking to The Drum, Banda’s creative director Alexandra Doroguntsova said: “It has been on the news for so long and people are really tired, but people are really still dying. This moment [the win] is not for the glory, but for the bigger purpose.”

This isn’t the first time Banda has called on the international community to use their voices online and support Ukraine. In March it made a hard-hitting film showing some of the devastating scenes that the country was facing and urged people to share the hashtag #StandWithUkraine.

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