As the immense refugee crisis worsens in Europe and the public cries for a way to help refugees gets louder, the app I Sea was well-timed for awards, and soon met success with a Bronze Cannes Lion from the Cannes Lions Festival's Promo and Activation category.
Read: our pick of the Cannes Lions 2016 winners (and they're all real)
Using real-time satellite footage, the app claims to help you identify boats in trouble and alerts the Malta-based Migrant Offshore Aid Station (Moas). According to its website, it "divides the satellite images into millions of small plots. Every user is assigned a unique plot of the sea to monitor."
Many sizeable cheeks are blushing - from Apple, who listed I Sea in the App Store and has since removed it, to publications that covered the app, such as Reuters, CBS News, Wired and Mashable.
The app was, after all, a terrible fake soon uncovered by technologists, led by SecuriTay (shown below).
I Sea is similar to previous apps - such as Uepaa, which turns smartphones into life-saving tracking, alerting and rescue devices by enabling users to raise emergency alarms from areas with no mobile reception. But with one key difference: Uepaa actually, definitely works.
How can a non-functioning app fool anyone, let alone an institution set up to be discerning These relevations will add to the questions being fired at design award shows, ad awards being a particularly hot target. Agencies often create work solely for that festival or even fake work in a frenzied rush for recognition. Maybe I Sea is an appropriate winner, then: a celebration of winning awards rather than good work.
The app's creators Grey Singapore wrote in a blog post that the "app is currently in testing mode" - though this wasn't deemed not worth a mention on the App Store or website - and that "at this time it is loading mapping satellite images to its GPS coordinates and users are able to report an anomaly in their plot of sea."
Though promoted by a video that remembers the 5,350 refugees who lost their lives at sea in 2015, which you can watch on its website, it's hard to see how the current app's apparently sole aim of reaping awards helps anyone other than Grey Singapore.