In the days following Russia’s February 2022 invasion, 10 million Ukrainians fled the country. Neighboring Poland became a haven for many Ukrainian citizens, offering opportunities for work, education, and housing.
The creative team at marketing giant McCann Worldgroup realized that this refugee crisis aligned with the goals of a key client: Mastercard’s mission to foster economic inclusivity. In just five weeks, a McCann team of 15—led by Adrian Botan, the firm’s chief creative officer for Europe—worked with Mastercard to launch Where to Settle, the winner of the 2024 Innovation by Design Awards in the finance category.
The app leverages data from government agency Statistics Poland, classifieds database Morizon-Gratka Group, and Mastercard to help Ukrainian refugees identify Polish communities in geographic areas that most needed their skills and talent. The hope was to fuel local economies and offset the overcrowding in big cities along the border.
Given the urgency, Botan says, his team launched the app while it was still in beta and continued to iterate on it, building out new features such as testimonials from local officials and politicians touting their hometowns as great places to land. Over time, more than 20% of the 1.5 million refugees who remained in Poland used Where to Settle.
Now, the team is building on the Where to Settle framework to help entrepreneurs. Botan says the data Mastercard has collected shows that some storefronts and businesses are most successful when they are located near other, complementary businesses.
The team will now use the framework of the Where to Settle app and to help Ukrainian and Polish entrepreneurs make even more granular decisions about business locations and commercial real estate opportunities. “Using the data, we can do ‘power couples,’” says Botan. “We could pair Ukrainian and Polish businesses. We could use this to welcome Ukrainian entrepreneurs and take the idea to the next level.”
This story is part of Fast Company’s 2024 Innovation by Design Awards. Explore the full list of companies creating products, reimagining spaces, and working to design a better world. Read more about the methodology behind the selection process.