Returning from this year’s 58th Annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, I captured my thoughts on some of the Grand Prix winners and highlights from across the award ceremonies, as well as reflections on the overall proceedings. First, here’s a look at my Top Ten on the awards front for 2011:
1. Take a good look at the Media Grand Prix winner from Cheil in Korea, for Tesco. This entry is a prime example of an idea that is built on technology but is all about people. It starts with an insight and solves for it in an effortless, engaging and damn creative fashion. It’s one that really made me say, “I wish I’d we’d done that!” I’ll say no more than it’s for Tesco, very much a number two player in South Korea.
http://www.canneslions.com/work/media/
2. Also worth special recognition as it shows where the industry headed in 2011 is Google Creative Lab’s “Wilderness Downtown,” which earned a Cyber Grand Prix. This Chrome demo is so much more memorable than just shouting about how Chrome can do this or that, it lets people experience the browser firsthand.
http://www.canneslions.com/work/cyber/entry.cfm?entryid=5660&award=1
3. Similar to Google’s Wilderness Downtown demo, Droga5‘s Bing effort featuring Jay-Z is all about experiencing the product thanks to a vast scavenger hunt. The campaign–which took both the Integrated Grand Prix and Outdoor Grand Prix honors–comprises of each page of Jay-Z’s Decode book being enlarged and dispersed geographically to places that relate to the content. People were then challenged to find the pages, capture them and re-assemble the book online, all via Bing.
http://www.canneslions.com/work/titanium/
4. Of course, what would a top 10 list be without the Old Spice Twitter Response campaign from Wieden+Kennedy? Last year’s Film Grand Prix went social and ultimately viral, earning a Cyber Grand Prix this year. Awesome business results for Old Spice (and W+K) too.
http://nosharpstuff.com/oldspice/cannes/integrated_responses/
Standouts from Winners of Cannes Gold Lions:
5. Edding Marker Pens’ Wall of Fame, another immersive “experience” that proves memorable. It’s easy to imagine the ways in which this can extend in many directions.
Who doesn’t want play with this?
http://www.canneslions.com/work/cyber/entry.cfm?entryid=14813&award=2
6. Coke’s ‘The Friendship Machine’, interactive of a different, more human flavor and obviously delivers great talkability.
http://www.canneslions.com/work/direct/entry.cfm?entryid=22626&award=2
7. JWT‘s effort for Burma Human Rights. Admittedly this a is a small scale exercise with limited reach to an audience within Grand Central Station however, it’s powerful, pr-able and repeatable. Gave me goosebumps. Powerful stuff.
http://www.canneslions.com/work/direct/entry.cfm?entryid=10282&award=2
8. IKEA ‘Home Made is Best.’ What a great way to take kitchens to a deeper engagement with the audience, provide a utilitarian service and stay true to IKEA’s self-assembly approach. Makes you smile as much as it makes folks talk (and ultimately shop) IKEA for their kitchen accessories.
http://www.canneslions.com/work/design/entry.cfm?entryid=26681&award=2
9. MTV ‘Balloons’, its inventiveness gets me. A clear audience favorite. Sit back and enjoy!
http://www.canneslions.com/work/design/entry.cfm?entryid=27118&award=2
10. Oh, and one final Grand Prix for National Australia Bank. Repositioning your competition is often the most powerful move in marketing and that’s exactly what this integrated campaign from NAB does so well, leaving viewers with no doubt as to who is the good guy in the ‘big 4’ Aussie retail banks. All done with a great tongue-in-cheek tone and manner. Easy to see why it won.
http://www.canneslions.com/work/pr/
Enough from me, go dive into the sea of inspiration that is the most amazing creative showcase in the world. For a limited time you can access the online archive of 2011 winners at: http://www.canneslions.com/work/.
A Celebration of Optimism
Last week’s Cannes International Festival of Creativity proved bigger and better than any I can recall.
The Cannes Festival used to be a simple affair that focused on advertising “film” and catching up with far-flung friends. Today’s festival is an overwhelming mix of award judging, seminars, and workshops that aim to recognize, educate, and inspire the great work, brands, and individuals in our industry.
This year was different in a number of ways. For starters, it was the first year under the new moniker of “Creativity” rather than the ‘advertising festival’ of old. Record numbers of clients attended (more than 20 percent of this year’s 9,000 delegates were client-side), the tech crowd turned up (Google, Facebook, Twitter, and even Angry Birds’ Rovio Mobile, to name a few), plus representatives from the emerging markets were there in large numbers.
The new moniker has also given way to new awards categories and recognitions. From established award categories (such as Design, PR, Cyber, and Film) and special awards such as Titanium and the Young Lions, the past two years have seen the introduction of new categories that reflect the growing reach the event. Last year, new categories for Film Craft, Independent Agency of the Year, and Grand Prix for Good awards were introduced, and in 2011, the inaugural Creative Effectiveness Lion was created.
Add to this the festival programming–a now packed schedule including 57 Seminars and 31 workshops–and you have perhaps the world’s most intensely scheduled, frenzied yet inspiring, global trade show. Through the clutter, a few themes emerged:
o Brand boom: brand marketers turn out with news announcements to bear. This year, major brands such as Unilever and Coca-Cola used Cannes as a stage for some big announcements. Paul Polman, Unilever’s CEO, announced Unilever’s re-org from three to four business units and Unilever’s future focus being New Delhi, not New York. At the same time, Coke unveiled its Liquid & Linked marketing strategy that embraces contribution in seemingly equal parts from the consumer, media partner, content company, tech company and creative agency–a clear indicator of just how far Coca-Cola budgets are expected to stretch.
o Award trends: No one is safe from globalization and independents
The global flavor was represented not just in the people in attendance, but also the geographies awarded. One thing is certain: no one is safe when it comes to dominating the festival creatively. Geographically, the US performance appeared less consistent than usual and the UK performance was patchy with not a single Gold in Film. Emerging markets like Brazil, Argentina, and, even Korea, scored big.
Brand marketers and in-house creative teams were also recognized. This year, the agency dominance in Cyber was challenged by Google’s own creative offering (two Gold Lions and a Grand Prix), and the Latin America region made things more interesting with a resurgence in their creative presence.
If there were a pattern to be recognized it would be that the star performers were once again the independents that punch above their weight, most notably Wieden + Kennedy, Droga5, and Jung von Matt.
o Optimism wins: it’s not just about the old advertising guard anymore. More than anything, Cannes 2011 was summed up in a most poetic fashion when consumer technology company Google unwittingly upstaged Ogilvy’s “David Ogilvy 100th anniversary” party. Forward-looking Google attracted long queues for entry to its bash (including heads of some of the world’s leading brands), whilst across the way, Ogilvy’s retrospective anniversary played host to the old Madison Avenue guard of ‘advertising’ with not a queue to be seen — a sign of the contagiously optimistic spirit of Cannes 2011.
Perhaps the plethora of new award categories, attendee diversity, geographies, and sessions illustrate one simple trend: how far the advertising industry truly has evolved in this fast changing, digitally disrupted world we live in. Looking towards the future of this annual celebration, I envision a festival that captures the fusion of creativity and technology in ways that yield better, more impactful and immersive ways for brands to communicate with customers, far beyond any pixel, screen, or platform alone can do.
