The Comedy for Change international community has announced the winners of the third edition of its Finger Awards hosted today at TV industry publishing platform C21Media's Content London conference and sponsored by Global TV consultancy K7 Media.
The Finger Awards were created to honour outstanding comedic projects with social impact. The awards are a unique initiative, giving exposure to creative work from around the world that aims to generate positive social change. Hosted at Kings Place in London’s Kings Cross today, the event was presented by former senior TV executive turned comedian, writer and broadcaster, Cally Beaton.
The Most Effective Award went to global creative agency Analog Folk and its campaign Intensivão da PPK, the first pilot of its kind in Brazil. This ‘digital school of vaginal health’ offered a five-week programme to teach young people everything they need to know about vaginas in a fun and forthright way. Better education eradicates shame so the campaign sought to arm young people with all the knowledge they need to understand how their vaginas work, have honest conversations about their bodies and allowed much better access to treatment. With 28 interactive lessons on Tik Tok delivered by experts and influencers, specialist knowledge on vaginas, psychology and body positivity, the campaign has garnered 44 million views and achieved the de-censorship of the word ‘vagina’ on Tik Tok.
The Most Creative Award went to another agency, this time Istanbul based Titrifikir for its work Big Change with Fox News in Turkey. Big Change was designed to raise awareness of deaf issues in Turkey where there are 3 million deaf people. When sign language translators are used on screen they are usually placed in a small box in a corner. To raise awareness on this issue they made a 'small' change in Turkey's most-watched morning news show during the International Week of the Deaf. The news anchor and the sign language translator positions on screen were swapped to show the disparity between deaf people's provision and the hearing.
Honorary mentions were also awarded to climate related projects due to the focus of the COP26 summit last month. The first was Climate Night in the USA, a unique project created by award winning exec producer Steve Bodow. On September the 22nd seven network and cable late-night shows took part in Climate Night - a first-of-its-kind collaboration where each programme focussed its themes and content on climate change.
Participating shows were The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Late Night With Seth Meyers on NBC, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and The Late Late Show With James Corden on CBS, Full Frontal With Samantha Bee on TBS, Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC and The Daily Show With Trevor Noah on Comedy Central.
The second Cuddle a Koala in Australia saw Dan Ilic, an Australian presenter, comedian and filmmaker initially crowdfunded money for a campaign to buy billboard space in Glasgow to coincide with the Summit. After massively exceeding his target, he then bought 10 minutes of time on the billboard known as Godzilla in Times Square in New York to 'publicly shame' the Australian government's response to climate change creating worldwide headlines.
Omri Marcus, Creative Director of The Finger Awards: "We thought 2020 was challenging, but then 2021 was like - hold my beer. As the nominees for The Finger Awards showed, comedy can always really make a difference. It was almost impossible to hold these awards this year, still, we gathered a group who strongly believed in the importance of the mission - honouring talented people in the world who used their comic abilities for good and pushed others to do the same. They say that the equation for comedy is tragedy plus time. I hope that by this time next year, at the fourth Finger Awards ceremony, we will have stopped working through the variants and perhaps be able to laugh at this crazy year.’
All finalists received a certificate for their nomination and the winners were awarded the now iconic Finger Award trophy.
About The Comedy for Change Community
Established in 2014, Comedy for Change is a vibrant international community of comedy writers, performers and executives who are interested in using their skills and platforms to affect social change. The network has more than 80 senior representatives from 20 countries. The goal of the network is to share, teach, learn and collaborate in creating effective comic content. Special focus is given to fighting racism and discrimination.
Pictured l-r Cally Beaton, Dogukan Dogan of Big Change, Jacqueline Hedge who worked on the Intensivao de PPK campaign and Gary Carter.
