Though the world’s elite are accustomed to talking and negotiating with each other, our research showed one group whose wellbeing and advice they value more highly. Their children!

Famously shown in Zuckerberg’s letter to his daughter, the opinions and fate of the world’s children weighs heavily on the minds of the powerful. The innocence of youth brings with it a creative power born from a sense that anything and everything is possible.

It was unlikely that Davos would invite children to the forum and more unlikely that a child could afford the $585,000 WEF annual membership fee.

#YoungWEF was devised to harness the creativity of youth and give children a platform to share their view on the future of the world’s healthcare, where it’s going and what is needed to get there, and to take these outputs and put them front and centre for the Davos elite and Philips consumers.

Our campaign had three key phases: WEF 2017, ‘Introducing Jason’ & WEF 2018. Each phase had a film at its core with accompanying social assets, thought leadership and user generated content.

WEF 2017 featured a host of children pitching their visions of the healthcare of the future, describing innovations that could change the lives of billions.

Post WEF, we created a new job for one of the children. Jason became ‘Philips Innovation Leader’, where he reported directly into the Philips CEO Frans Van Houten and pitched him his innovation – the ‘Health Stick’.

In 2018 we brought it back to the present and instead of asking the children to predict the future, we asked them solve the very real healthcare problems the world is facing now.

The campaign was transcreated and shared by Philips teams around the world, activated locally in across 14+ countries.

Our approach systematically solved Philips’ two-fold issue. Not only did we capture the attention of WEF Delegates and hugely increase Philips’ success at the event and beyond, we also ensured that the public viewed the company’s involvement in the World Economic Forum as a useful and important activity.

Philips saw a 300% increase in WEF bilateral meetings from a previous record of 20 to 96. Philips’ visibility at the forum also vastly increased with Frans Van Houten invited to an additional 6 CEO speaking roles, another marked 300% increase.

Most importantly, however, were the 22 business opportunities Philips secured at the event, representing growth of 10% from the previous year, ensuring that they were able to progress further in their goal of improving the lives of 3bn people a year by 2025.

On social the content generated a huge 38 million impressions, 2.6 million engagements and 12.2 million film views.