Cannes Lions has introduced Creative Brand of the Year, a special award to celebrate brands that successfully use creativity as a lever to drive their business forward. The award will honor individual brands, and in turn recognize their partner agencies, on a collective mission to drive business performance through creativity. The inaugural winner will be the brand that accumulates the most points from its shortlisted and winning entries at Cannes Lions 2019.
This new honor joins the roster of other special awards that are won through points accumulated for winning Lions at the Festival, rather than awarded by a jury. These include: Holding Company of the Year, Network of the Year, Agency of the Year, Independent Agency of the Year, Media Network of the Year, The Palme d’Or, Healthcare Network of the Year and Healthcare Agency of the Year.
Simon Cook, managing director, Cannes Lions, said, “The Creative Brand of the Year award is designed to recognize the creative risks that individual brands take to distinguish their product in different regions around the world. It’s an opportunity to celebrate the bravery and forward thinking of both the individual brand and the offices within agencies that work directly on that brand producing ever more creative ideas.”
Brands credited in the Brand/Client or Product/Service fields on all shortlisted or winning submissions will accrue points as follows:
- 35 points for a Titanium and Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix
- 30 points for all other Grand Prix, including Grand Prix for Good
- 30 points for a Titanium Lion
- 15 points for a Gold Lion
- 7 points for a Silver Lion
- 3 points for a Bronze Lion
- 1 point for a shortlist position
Multi-brand organizations, whose portfolio of products and services are marketed under more than one brand, are not eligible for Creative Brand of the Year. Instead, these companies are eligible for Creative Marketer of the Year, an honorary award selected by the Festival and presented to an advertiser that has built a long-standing reputation for creative bravery and innovative marketing. Previous winners of the Creative Marketer of the Year include; Google, Burger King, Samsung Electronics and Heineken with the 2019 recipient to be announced shortly.
The 2019 Creative Brand of the Year will be awarded onstage at the final Awards Show on Friday, June 21.
First-Time Feature Directors Make Major Splash At AFI Fest, Generate Oscar Buzz
Two first-time feature directors who are generating Oscar buzz this awards season were front and center this past weekend at AFI Fest in Hollywood. Rachel Morrison, who made history as the first woman nominated for a Best Cinematography Oscar---on the strength of Mudbound in 2018--brought her feature directorial debut, The Fire Inside (Amazon MGM Studios), to the festival on Sunday (10/27), and shared insights into the film during a conversation session immediately following the screening. This came a day after William Goldenberg, an Oscar-winning editor for Argo in 2013, had his initial foray into feature directing, Unstoppable (Amazon MGM Studios), showcased at the AFI proceedings. He too spoke after the screening during a panel discussion. The Fire Inside--which made its world premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival--tells the story of Claressa “T-Rex” Shields (portrayed by Ryan Destiny), a Black boxer from Flint, Mich., who trained to become the first woman in U.S. history to win an Olympic Gold Medal in the sport. She achieved this feat--with the help of coach Jason Crutchfield (Brian Tyree Henry)--only to find that her victory at the Summer Games came with relatively little fanfare and no endorsement deals. So much for the hope that the historic accomplishment would be a ticket out of socioeconomic purgatory for Shields and her family. It seemed like yet another setback in a cycle of adversity throughout Shields’ life but she persevered, going on to win her second Gold Medal at the next Olympics and becoming a champion for gender equality and equitable pay for women in sports. Shields has served as a source of inspiration for woman athletes worldwide--as well as to the community of... Read More