McCann New York won the Design Grand Prix for its “ADLaM Display” project for Microsoft at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity on Tuesday.

The Interpublic Group of Cos. agency helped extend the lifelong work of two brothers, Ibrahima and Abdoulaye Barry, in preserving the language of the Fulani people of West Africa. The language, Pulaar, is spoken by more than 40 million people and the brothers have been working with Microsoft since 2018 to create an alphabet for it.

McCann New York helped create a new digital version of the alphabet, which the brothers called ADLaM, and made it available to use across the Microsoft 365 suite to help preserve the culture of the people who speak the language.

Quinnton Harris, co-founder and CEO of research and design firm Retrospect and Cannes Lions Design jury president, said “ADLaM” deserved the Cannes Lions top honors not only because of its “undeniable” craft but because of its impact.

“We’re not just preserving a culture—we’re enabling, through design and innovation, an entire culture to create from their point of view,” Harris said. “We accelerated a culture, an entire group of people who will have a profound impact on the world because they get to create from their point of view. A group of people now have the ability to design within their cultural context.”

Harris said the project goes a long way in showing how advertising can promote inclusivity.

“Inclusivity is about more than what you look like and how you think,” Harris said. “We’re really making space for people to have a human experience that they didn’t have before.”

Gold winners

Among the gold winners was “The Cost of Gold” from DM9, a DDB agency in Sao Paulo. The campaign debuted during the 95th Academy Awards to raise awareness of illegal gold mining in the Amazon rainforest.

The two-minute ad exposed illegal gold mining in the Indigenous Yanomami territory and its devastating impacts on the region's rivers and forests. A tribesman in the ad implored award nominees to replace their gold statues with painted ones made by Brazilian tribes.

“My Japan Railway” from Dentsu Tokyo—celebrating the 150th anniversary of Japan's railways with a series of events, observances and other brand activations—also took home a Gold Lion. The celebration included a special market selling railway-themed merchandise such as gold steam train models. “My Japan Railway” won the Industry Craft Grand Prix on Tuesday. 

Service Plan of Munich, Germany, also won gold for its “Wastecare” campaign for which the agency created a sustainable skin care product for Japanese-German textile startup Aizome. The company says it uses only plants, water and ultrasound instead of synthetic chemicals in its dyeing process.