MIAMI—The Born Again Simulator, a campaign conducted on behalf of the The Norwegian Agency of Development Cooperation (Norad) by Gambit Hill+Knowlton Strategies, was presented with the Platinum SABRE Award for the best public relations campaign of 2013 at the Global SABRE Awards dinner, part of the third annual Global Public Relations Summit.

The campaign, which used digital technology to enable Norwegians to understand what their lives might have been like had they been born in different parts of the world, was selected as the best out of more than 5,000 entries to SABRE competitions around the world this year.

It beat out four other finalists:
• Grohe Green Mosque—Grohe with Memac Ogilvy
• I Touch Myself—The Cancer Council with Hill+Knowlton Strategies Australia
• Making "Stronger than the Storm" A Self Fulfilling Prophecy for NJ Shore Businesses and Communities—New Jersey Economic Development Authority with MWW
• Project Patty: The Burger That Will Change the World—Maastricht University with Ogilvy Public Relations/London

“We saw a huge volume of outstanding creative work this year,” says Paul Holmes, editor of The Holmes Report and chair of the SABRE Awards judges. “And we saw a lot of work that shows how good public relations can really make a difference in some of the critical issues facing the world. The Born Again Simulator stood out for the way it used digital technology to deliver a unique experience, to make the issues faced by people in developing nations real to the population of a more developed market.”

With some segments of the Norwegian public skeptical about the country’s spending on foreign aid, Norad wanted to find a way to encourage people—particularly young people—to take a greater interest. Gambit Hill+Knowlton created the Born Again Simulator. The digital simulator let individuals see what their life could have been, if born in a developing country, through a timeline modeled on their Facebook timeline.

A full list of Global SABRE winners can be found here.