Innocean Holds Award Ceremony for Marine Environment Conservation 'S.O.S Program'

Innocean announced on the 20th that it held the award ceremony for its social contribution activity, the ‘S.O.S (Social Problem Solver) Program.’ The ceremony, held at the headquarters in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, was attended by CEO Lee Yong-woo and a total of 17 award-winning teams (57 participants).

Innocean held an awards ceremony for the representative social contribution activity, the 'S.O.S (Social Problem Solver) Program.' CEO Lee Yong-woo of Innocean (second from the left) and the grand prize-winning team of the S.O.S program.
[Photo by Innocean]

The S.O.S program is Innocean’s representative social contribution activity that provides advertising experience opportunities and scholarships based on the creative capabilities unique to advertising companies to university students aspiring to become marketers, while supporting public institutions participating together in solving social problems through talent donation.

Under the theme of ‘Marine Environment Conservation,’ this S.O.S program, conducted in collaboration with the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, publicly solicited ideas for campaigns on sustainable marine ecosystem conservation methods, marine litter reduction, and marine plastic waste recycling solutions.

The grand prize was awarded to the student team of Lim Na-kyung (Chung-Ang University), Shin Dong-chan (Korea University), and Choi Hyun-seung (Dongguk University). The grand prize-winning team planned a package called SAVE_THE_MERMAID that helps proper disposal of cosmetics, effectively conveying the message that indiscriminate disposal of cosmetics, which are marine microplastics, leads to environmental pollution.

The judges highly evaluated the team for identifying cosmetics as a major cause of marine microplastic pollution, proposing direct solutions, and attempting commercialization through branding. The grand prize-winning team received the highest prize money ever of 10 million KRW and will also participate in a hands-on internship at Innocean starting in December. During this period, they will receive advertising know-how from mentor experts composed of Innocean employees and directly experience practical advertising work.

Two teams won the gold prize: the team led by Kim Min-young (Dongguk University) with three others, and the team led by Park Kyung-bin (Seokyeong University) with three others. Kim Min-young’s team proposed an integrated campaign using the ‘whale’ character titled ‘A Giant Whale Lives in Our Home Washing Machine’ to help people feel and practice marine protection in daily life. Park Kyung-bin’s team planned the ‘Make the Sea Happy (Haeropge)’ campaign to spread proper laundry culture, receiving favorable reviews. Each gold prize team was awarded 5 million KRW. Additionally, four teams received silver prizes with 2 million KRW each, and ten teams received bronze prizes with 500,000 KRW each.

Lee Yong-woo, CEO of Innocean, said, “It is meaningful that many creative university students showed great interest and participated in the 13th S.O.S program, which focused on a campaign for marine environment conservation.” He added, “We will continue to operate this talent-donation CSR activity to nurture excellent prospective marketers by contemplating innovative solutions to social problems and through this process.”

Meanwhile, since starting social enterprise promotion in 2011, Innocean has conducted the S.O.S program in collaboration with government and public institutions on themes such as greenhouse gas reduction (2015), encouraging the use of cloth diapers (2016), child car seat installation (2017), bicycle helmet wearing (2018), child abuse prevention (2019), post-COVID-19 (2020), stalking prevention (2021), and carbon neutrality implementation (2022).

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.