Participants will be able to enter starting Monday, July 10, with a submission deadline of Friday, Sept. 15. Judging will take place throughout October, with the winner announced at the end of that month.

The Working with Cancer team hopes that participants in the brief will solve the problem in multiple ways, from film to digital activations to hacking corporate culture and policy and seeking political change.

“We always wanted this to be more than just a Publicis initiative. Arthur reached out to every holding company—Omnicom was a founding holding company partner of ours,” said Carla Serrano, global CSO of Publicis Groupe.

Serrano said getting Cannes involved seemed like a natural next chapter for the movement, and that helped get more holding companies involved.

“Lions is a proud supporter of the Working with Cancer pledge and happy to lend our world-class judging process to a competition that provides an exciting opportunity for the industry to unite and work toward removing the stigma of cancer in the workplace,” said Simon Cook, CEO at Cannes Lions.

Working with Cancer aims to completely erase the stigma and insecurity of cancer at work. Today, the program is an alliance of major international companies, with more than 600 pledging businesses impacting up to 20 million employees. The program has partnerships with key cancer research bodies and influencers, including Dani Trops, The Stroups, CancerChic and Laurie MacCaskill.

Weiss called this is a perception issue, and those in the industry are in the perception shifting business.

“We need to put our collective minds together to eradicate the stigma associated with this disease. When people feel safe, seen and appreciated, they heal faster. The last thing anyone with cancer needs is to deal with any unnecessary mental stressors,” said Weiss, adding that the open brief will bring brilliant ideas that will change lives today and for generations to come.

“I think that we’ve really touched people’s personal experiences with this. And this is something that our industry actually can do something about,” said Serrano.