For Matt Eastwood, chief creative officer of DDB New York, the 2013 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity scored high marks for recognizing “a more diverse range of work across a wide variety of clients and media. It was a really excellent year for Cannes. While ‘Dumb Ways to Die’ [the train safety public service video for Melbourne Metro out of McCann Melbourne] won five Grand Prix honors, there was still a feeling that there was a great body of overall work at the show. ‘Dumb Ways to Die’ definitely didn’t feel like the only work of significance. You had wonderful stuff from Dove, Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, among others.”
Eastwood noted that a theme over the past couple of years–doing work for good causes–has happily continued. He cited the alluded to work for Dove and Coke, the former being “Real Beauty Sketches” from Ogilvy Brazil, which took the Titanium Grand Prix as well as an Integrated Gold Lion. The Dove campaign centered on a video in which a criminal sketch artist draws women based on self-descriptions and how others described them. The differences are striking, underscoring that women’s self-images fall far short of capturing their true beauty, as more accurately reflected through the eyes of others. “It’s an example of something not just great for the brand but for society,” assessed Eastwood. “We’re seeing more of that–like with Coke’s ‘Small World Machines’ [from Leo Burnett Sydney] which was good for the brand but also tried to do good by building bridges between India and Pakistan.”
Also resonating for Eastwood were the “Meet The Superhumans” spot promoting U.K. Channel 4’s coverage of the 2012 Summer Paralympic Games (from Channel 4’s in-house agency) and Oreo’s Daily Twist from Draftfcb New York. The latter, a Cyber Lion Grand Prix winner, was a newsroom-style campaign consisting of 100 pieces of content in 100 days during which the famed Oreo cookie illustrated historical milestones and current event stories of note. “I very much like seeing breakthrough work for what has traditionally been a creatively conservative client,” said Eastwood. “That Oreo campaign was great work from a big brand that stood out.”
Meanwhile “Meet the Superhumans” landed the Film Craft Lions Grand Prix. Athletes bound in wheelchairs, others missing a limb, still others with varying forms of paralysis are seen hitting the track and field, the basketball court, the soccer field, the gym, the swimming pool and the weight lifting room, among other competitive and practice venues. They are determined, powerful and ready to go for the Gold, Silver and Bronze in the Paralympics.
Several athletes are juxtaposed with images of what made them physically challenged. In one stark shot, a male athlete is seen next to the automobile wreckage of 20 years ago which had injured him. Another scenario depicts an ultrasound reading reflecting an apparent birth defect. Yet another scene captures a military action gone wrong as an explosion rocks the world of a soldier who nonetheless perseveres to become a world class Paralympics competitor. Snippets of these stirring stories are meshed within the context of this minute-and-a-half promo spot to convey just how far these athletes have come in order to make the grade for the 2012 Paralympics.
As we see stirring images of these athletes training and performing at a high level, supered messages appear on screen which read, “Forget everything you thought you knew about strength”/”Forget everything you thought you knew about humans.” Indeed, “it’s time to do battle.”/”Meet the Superhumans.”
The only category that Eastwood found “underwhelming” was the Press Lions. “Maybe that’s due simply to the ever dwindling number of choices in that category,” he conjectured. “Whatever the reason, to me a lot of the work felt a bit small.”
But in the big picture Eastwood was “pleased with the overall body of winning work and the overall judging. The judges seemed very meticulous this year. Quite often I would get back from Cannes and there would be moments where I would go, ‘What? How did that win.’ I didn’t find myself doing that this year. I think the bar was set quite high. This year was the year of the super jury. You had legendary chairs of juries–Dan Wieden [Wieden+Kennedy], John Hegarty [of BBH]–overseeing jurors who had judged at Cannes before. When you have John Hegarty leading a Film jury, you’re going to have high standards that the work has to live up to or it won’t come close to receiving any recognition.”
Eastwood also came away with a positive message closer to home–namely a stellar showing from DDB New York. “It was our best performance in years,” he said of the NY shop’s work for Water Is Life, the NYC Ballet and the NY Lottery which collectively garnered six Lions. “I came back to our office and gave a speech about Cannes to the agency, pointing out that this is a great example of what we can all do when we believe in ourselves and push hard for great work for our clients. It was great to come back to New York with the wind in our sails. I told our people that we have to embrace this momentum, keep doing great work, better ourselves this next year and not rest on our laurels. Often agencies will win big for one piece of work. But to have different clients’ work win Lions says much more. It says more about the agency than it does one piece of work for one great client. If you can do it for multiple clients, it shows that you’re lifting the bar for the entire agency’s output. And it wasn’t just our office. All of DDB did well [with McDonald’s Canada scoring Cyber Gold, among other Lions–along with clients like Lilly Canada, and from DDB Chicago work for Mars and Unilever]. We had finalists in almost every Lion category.”
Juror perspectives
For Eastwood’s agency compatriot, Lisa Bennett, executive VP, creative at DDB North America, and a judge on the Film Lions jury, the Grand Prix winners–“Dumb Ways to Die” and the Intel/Toshiba episodic film The Beauty Inside (out of Pereira & O’Dell, San Francisco)–reflected an increasingly prevalent industry theme. “The Grand Prix winners we selected for Film also won Grand Prixs in other categories,” she noted, The other four Grand Prix honors for “Dumb Ways to Die” came in the Integrated, Direct, PR and Radio Lions while The Beauty Inside additionally scored Grand Prix wins in both Cyber and Branded Content & Entertainment.
“That’s why my first choice of category to judge was again the Film Lions,” explained Bennett who first served on the Film Jury in 2009. “Film is more important than ever because now it has to cut through on more screens than before. Film’s relevance has only increased. And that’s why it was a little more difficult to award Gold Lions. The judging group as a whole would scrutinize the work and was perhaps even more critical this year because we wanted to acknowledge films that hit on all cylinders, looking first and foremost for a fresh idea, if it has a strong connection to the product or service, if it makes sense for the brand, if it’s rooted in a powerful insight. There are a lot of criteria to meet and when a campaign does that, it’s more likely to be relevant across different screens.”
An episodic social film on Facebook, The Beauty Inside featured a male protagonist who wakes up as a different person every day before finally falling in love. Viewers auditioned via web cam to help portray the lead character. “This work drew you in,” said Bennett. “You wanted to see the second episode, then the next. It was also brilliant in relation to the brand, taking what Intel stands for–‘Intel Inside’–and bringing that to life in a very human way, taking viewers inside the character.”
As for “Dumb Ways to Die,” Bennett said that the judges were aware of it earlier in the week winning the Direct, PR and Radio Grand Prix honors. (It copped the Integrated Grand Prix the same day as the Film Lion Grand Prix.) “I think we were even harder on that piece as a jury because we knew it was doing so well. We really wanted to make sure it was deserving of the Film Grand Prix and ultimately we decided that it clearly was.”
Chris Miller, chief digital officer of Draftfcb Chicago, was a judge for the Mobile Lions, just in their second year. “Judging was an incredible experience,” he shared. “Twelve people plus the jury president from different agencies around the world got along really well and engaged in a lot of conversation. We had 9 am to 2 am days. The passion about the Mobile space was energizing. Ultimately we decided on 10 Gold Lions, four of which were for not-for-profit clients, which left us with six for Grand Prix consideration.”
Taking the Mobile Grand Prix was DM9JaymeSyfu, Manila (a DDB agency), for its “TXTBKS” which condensed textbooks into text messages. These messages were then put onto SIM cards and repackaged into Smart TXTBKS on older phones, creating much needed textbooks in the Philippines, a market where tablets and e-readers are too expensive for most families.
“‘TXTBKS’ was great in its simplicity,” assessed Miller. “You can do great mobile work without it necessarily being high tech. The idea was compelling.”
The other two candidates in the running for the Mobile Grand Prix were Mattel’s “Scrabble WiFi” from Ogilvy France and Google’s “World Wide Maze” out of Tokyo-based agency Party. “World Wide Maze” turned a website into a multi-layered map–through your phone you can interact with the computer screen to drive through to destinations. As for Scrabble, users could log onto free WiFi for a duration that depended on how long the words they created in Scrabble were. “It was based,” said Miller, “on a great behavioral insight.”
Miller was impressed with the growth in the Mobile category, which drew about 30 percent more entries than last year. He reported that there were close to 1,100 entries this time around and that many coupled “great insights with great ideas.”
Additionally, Miller was gratified by Draftfcb’s overall showing at Cannes, which was the best in the agency’s seven-year history, highlighted by the aforementioned “Daily Twist” Oreo campaign from Draftfcb NY which took the Cyber Lions Grand Prix.
