NBA and Publicis Groupe win at Cannes Lions Festival

The NBA partnered with Publicis Groupe (Dubai) to bring alive the “Nets for Change” campaign in February 2024, which seeks to protect marine ecosystems by removing abandoned fishing nets, or ghost nets, from the oceans and repurposing them into basketball nets.  This initiative began with organizing a widespread beach and ocean clean-up on beaches in Versova and Madh Island.  The repurposed nets were installed at basketball courts across the city.

To create awareness around this initiative amongst the youth, a series of posters were created to replicate some of the most iconic dunks in NBA history by using authentic street-style photography.  The campaign won a Gold for Photography and a Silver for Outdoor Advertising in Industry Craft at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

The three posters with an iconic dunk each, encourage young ballers to be the next 6, 8, or 23 amongst a billion, paying homage to legends of the sport who wore these iconic jersey numbers in their career.  One poster features a recreation of Michael Jordan’s iconic ‘Jumpman’ silhouette as a man jumps across a patch of land, asking who’d the next 23 in a billion.  Another poster replicates a back-scratching dunk in real-time as a man jumps off a boat, with Kobe Bryant’s No. 8 as the inspiration.  Another emphatic slam features on the third poster, with a nod to LeBron James’ old number of No. 6. 

The “Nets for Change” program is an example of the NBA’s commitment to using the power of basketball to inspire fans and partners to minimize environmental impacts and help drive broader industry and societal progress.  Along with this initiative, the posters seek to inspire young players in India to pursue the sport and aim to be among the greatest basketball players of all time.  The campaign video highlights the extent of the ecological damage caused by discarded fishing nets and how this initiative is helping combat it, one hoop at a time. 

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