Last night at Cannes was the ceremony everyone stays up for, and the one I missed, to my infinite regret. Crucially, it also marked the first year a Film Craft category was incorporated into the Lions.
Some really good stuff was awarded, material that was a pleasure to watch repeatedly over the course of the year. All in all, a crisis isn’t a bad backdrop for the ad industry. Some beautiful, deeply human things have come out of it – work that makes us dream again.
Take a look down yonder. I am only listing Grand Prix, Integrated Grand Prix and Titanium Grand Prix winners. To see the rest, click on the category.
: Wieden + Kennedy Portland, “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” for Old Spice. You might be tired of it by now, but consider the contagion of creativity it unleashed in users that appropriated the work in their own ways. How often does an ad compel users to memorise its dialogue?
Also consider: before hitting airwaves, the ad was posted on Old Spice’s Facebook, where the page acquired 100,000 new fans in a month’s time. One-quarter of fans are female – a market that doesn’t easily shine to the mens care market. Not bad, Isaiah Mustafa, not bad at all.
Film Craft: RSA Films, London for its Philips Cinema TV entry, “The Gift” by Carl Erik Rinsch. This is my favourite work: something that springs out of ancient folklore, Russian literature and rich sci-fi all at once, with plenty of room for interpretation.
It also merits seeing the other Philips Cinema entries, which manipulate the same piece of dialogue in vastly different ways. The tagline ties elegantly back to the product: “There are millions of ways to tell a story. There’s only one way to watch one.”
Nice to see a production company win much-merited credit for its work. The ad agency for the work was DDB UK.
Titanium and Integrated: The Integrated Grand Prix went to Wieden + Kennedy Portland for client Nike’s “Livestrong.”
For Titanium, Crispin Porter + Bogusky took the Grand Prix for Best Buy’s “Twelpforce.” Nice way to bring the knowledge of Best Buy’s associates outside brick and mortar.
The Grand Prix for Good: Yeah, there’s a category for this. Not surprisingly, it went to Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO London for “Choose a Different Ending,” its anti-knife crime campaign for the Metropolitan Police. Start playing below – there are about 10 different endings, I think, in total.
Other awards (and there were a slew):
Advertising Agency of the Year: AlmapBBDO, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Independent Agency of the Year, a new accolade, was awarded to Jung Von Matt, Hamburg.
Network of the Year: BBDO.
The Palme d’Or: production firm MJZ, USA.
Advertiser of the Year: Unilever “for their consistently ground-breaking campaigns and inspiring marketing,” according to the pressie. Applause all around.
