A national competition, one agency, six young creatives, three projects and three awards. That’s how we could briefly summarize this year’s Young Lions Serbia 2026, where three teams, six young talents, all from McCann Beograd, a member of AMA Group, won gold, silver, and bronze.
The first-place project “Unseen Legends,” created by Dušan Antonijević and Haris Ličina, changes the way we look at donations. Their project is not just a campaign, but an attempt to turn empathy into a daily practice. The jury’s explanation highlighted that the winning work stood out for the clarity of its idea and its ability to translate a complex and sensitive topic into an understandable, applicable, and socially responsible communication solution.
Their colleagues from McCann Beograd, Lola Agius and Pavle Kostić, as well as Milica Ostojić and Ana Krbanjević, won second and third place. With the gold-winning Young Lions, Dušan Antonijević and Haris Ličina, who will represent Serbia at the global Young Lions competition at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, we spoke about ideas that are created not for awards, but for people.
MM: The Drop-in Center is a place that has depended on unstable donations for years. With your work, you are changing the perspective. Why do you focus on the children’s stories instead of the problem?
Dušan: While thinking about the competition task, we realized that money is not the main problem. People are genuinely willing to help and react quickly when needed. But we only react when an alarm goes off.
Our insight was simple, yet uncomfortable: until a problem becomes dramatic, it remains invisible, buried under other issues. That’s why we wanted to remind people that even though the problems of children from the Drop-in Center sometimes become invisible, those children do not.
Once we get to know them, hear their stories and dreams, their problems never remain invisible again. And each of us has encountered them at least once and can confirm that among them are truly unseen legends.
MM: Your work relies on the idea of invisibility. Was it difficult to create a campaign about children we all encounter, but often fail to notice? How did you manage to bring them closer to everyone while still protecting their privacy?
Haris: The biggest challenge was exactly that. We wanted to keep the children’s portraits to create a stronger connection, while at the same time protecting them and preserving their anonymity.
In trying to achieve both effects, we developed a visual treatment where typography, or text, acts as a kind of screen that covers the portraits but still leaves small fragments of their faces visible. This directly ties into the core idea and the campaign name “Unseen Legends.”
MM: You introduced digital mechanisms such as music live streams and monthly drops. Why those specifically?
Haris: We worked on the project as a team, with a clear intention to create a solution that wouldn’t remain just a competition entry, but something that could actually be implemented and help the Drop-in Center.
Since the competition was in the “Digital” category, we tried to make the most of the digital channels we use every day, to ensure continuous support for our legends. If people already spend hours listening to music or on YouTube, why not use that space for children?
Through a passive music live stream that can play while you work, or limited collections that people buy because they like them, we turn donating into a small, simple, but long-term decision. There is also the “unseen” Instagram shop, which allows us to remind people to donate every month in a different way.
The idea is to make support more accessible and engaging, so that donating stops being just a momentary reaction to an alarm and becomes part of a daily digital routine. In this way, every donation gains a face and a deeper meaning. It becomes a dream waiting to be realized.
MM: What will you take to Cannes as your main impression from the competition, and how does it feel knowing your work might become reality for the children from the Drop-in Center?
Dušan: The greatest inspiration always comes when we are solving a big and important problem. When through creativity we manage to look at a problem from a completely different angle, new solutions emerge that can make a real difference in people’s lives.
It’s an incredible feeling to know that our work has the potential to become reality and directly help the Drop-in Center and all its unseen legends.
Cannes will certainly be a big and exciting experience. We’re going there to learn from the whole world, to see where we stand in relation to the global scene, and what we can bring back so that Serbia appears more often in competition for major Lions.
Haris: We’re looking forward to the opportunity to tackle another big, now global problem, and to see where we stand compared to young colleagues from around the world.
We want to show that our region also has great potential for creativity and the power of ideas at a global level.
