Cannes Lions

Festival of
Creativity

2018
This commentary was originally published in the
Creative Pool prior to Cannes Lions.

What a
fascinating
Cannes
Lions 2018
is shaping
up to be.
Publicis launched Marcel, the app that
crowdsources talent, at their own conference
VivaTech recently. Marcel allows anyone around
the globe to input all their crazy, different and wild
ideas down for ongoing projects meaning that the
way employees within companies interact, has
dramatically changed and the industry needs to
keep up.
Cannes Lions has gone about a much-needed
reduction of their award categories; now focusing
on categories including Reach, Communications,
Craft, Experience, Innovation, Impact and Good.
Admittedly, the only thing I am really interested
in is Craft. More specifically how brands in this
‘everything that is new is news’ landscape, can
find a way to cut through the noise; I think craft
(or point-of-view) is a great way to build brands
that people love.
I mean, when Spike Jones took on the surreal
Apple experience it really reflected the energy of
the brand and I suspect this campaign will pick
up plenty of awards. In contrast to Apple’s energy,
Lacoste have demonstrated a beautiful and
timeless story of first love through the ages.
The PSA story...has all the emotion needed to
tug at the heartstrings. #SeeDifferent enlightens
viewers to change their perceptions around
burn victims. Vegas Presents also alters people’s
perceptions for the city of Las Vegas, to
reposition from ‘Sin City’ to an open, exciting city.
Pedigree Dog Selfie six is great innovation…I
love this, simply because it is fun, inventive
and culturally relevant at reflecting our love of
‘Selfies’. The all claiming Tide Superbowl ad will
take away a fist full of awards, and I suspect so
will FCK from KFC as a reaction to their chicken
shortage. Brilliant.
Overall, the advertising themes depicted will
reflect where we are creatively. We all know
the fragmented platforms are settling now and
brands can now explore how to engage people
uniquely, while collecting data transparently
(thank you GDPR!). Brands that are culturally
relevant will win, those who focus on human
needs through incredible stories will resonate.
And finally, those who evoke fun and surprise will
always seem refreshing.
The work
So what won and was it refreshing?

Omnicom won holding company of the year, upsetting WPP’s

seven-year streak, while Adam and Eve DDB won creative
agency of the year.

The 2018 Cannes Lion Heart awarded to Paul Polman

of Unilever in recognition of his commitment to building
sustainability.

Spotify won the festivals first ever Media Brand of the year,
well deserved for a loved brand that develops real distinction
in the music category. They took the massively popular
RapCaviar playlist and built a real-world brand of it with
concerts, merch and a cult following. At the opposite end
of their brand is a service called ‘Adoptify’ where spotify
matches rescue dogs with people who appreciate the same
taste in music. Fabulous.

Meanwhile Google won Creative Marketer and rightly so

with beautifully designed products like Google Home and
‘MyLine powered by Google’. A simple idea to allow billions of
people without a smartphone to call 6000913 and use voice
to search for anything. Brilliant. It also won the Grand Prix for
Innovation.
Social Influencer
Nike won the new Social & Influencer Grand Prix for ‘Nothing Beats A Londoner’.
We discussed this our team drinks on kickoff night, it’s a contagious piece.
P&G won two Grand Prix’s for the same
category, film with a powerful film for P&G
‘My Black is Beautiful’, which addressed
racial bias in the US, and of course ‘It’s
A Tide Ad’ for the Super Bowl. Both
exceptionally well executed.

Film
Titanium Grand Prix, Sustainable
Development Goals and Direct Grand
Prix all three were won by the brilliantly
designed The Palau Pledge, Palau Legacy
Project, which asks visitors to Palau to sign
an agreement in their passports not to
damage the island’s resources.
Titanium
The Lion for Change Grand Prix, Glass was
won by Libresse/Bodyform for ‘Blood Normal,’
the first ad for period products to feature red
blood rather than blue.

Change
Creative data
Creative Data Grand Prix went to ‘JFK Unsilenced’ for The Times,
which recreated a ‘lost’ John F Kennedy speech using AI.
One of my fav categories each year is product design. This year, the
Product Design Grand Prix went to Kingo, a startup that supplies
prepaid solar energy kits to communities that have no access to mains
electricity. Beautiful.

Product design
Entertainment
The Grand Prix in Entertainment went to EVERT_45, for mobile phone
company KPN. In order to connect to young people a fictional vlogger,
EVERT_45 was created and they used Instagram and YouTube to tell
stories about his experiences as a young boy during the war. Based on
real events using updated media.
Brand Experience and Activation was won by ‘Today at Apple’, and well deserved as
the brand thinks of their store as a computer. The outside is the hardware and the
inside is the software. Pure Genius.

Brand experience
In the same category of Brand Experience, was the
beautifully executed Intel choreographed drones,
which I saw live at CES, but also open the Winter
Olympics this year featuring 1200 drones to put on
a spectacular animated light show.

Outdoor went to McDonald’s ‘Next Exit’,

showcasing the power of iconic design.

Outdoor
Print
Print & Publishing a category I love, went to
Tagwords by Budweiser. A cheeky idea where
they published a series of words like “1960 Flying
V Slide Budweiser” and entering them in Google
search reveals photo of rock icons with Budweiser.
It’s an authentic showcase of their heritage with
rock ‘n’ roll. Go ahead, try it.
Digital craft
Digital Craft Grand Prix went to Smashing Pumpkins’
Billy Corgan’s single Aeronaut a 3.5 minute trippy VR
experience with 2D overlaid in 3D.
Film Craft winner went to Healthcare is
#NotATarget is a harrowing story by the Red Cross
to highlight the fact that healthcare workers are
targets if war. As a new father, I could barely get
through this one. I dare you to try as well.

Film craft
The Media Grand Prix for its
series of ‘food love stories’ films
for supermarket chain Tesco.

Media
The Grand Prix in both the Design and PR Lions was
awarded to ‘Trash Isles,’ the campaign for The Plastic
Oceans Foundation applied to the United Nations to have a
mountain of trash in the North Pacific Ocean recognized as
an official country, with Al Gore as its first citizen.

Design & PR
Entertainment
Apple’s smooth Welcome Home, directed by Spike Jonze won the
Entertainment Lions Grand Prix.
Creative
effectiveness
Creative Effectiveness category is one to watch, it’s an invite
only category to showcase results of work that has won
previously. The Grand Prix went to Savlon Healthy Hands Chalk
Sticks, which aims to make education around handwashing fun.
St Mark
The prestigious Lion of St Mark award was given
this year to the legendary Piyush and Prasoon
Pandey brothers from India who oversee Ogilvy
South Asia.

Piyush confirmed this generous spirit by

concluding his speech with “So before I go I must
add one thing, I’d love to see a Lioness on this
stage very shortly,”

Oh and another bonus, India took home 21 medals.

What a year, see you all in twelve months.
Noteable
Here are some creatives that relate to the theme
of craft and beauty in helping to build brands that
people love.
All Blacks
All Blacks uniform that celebrates Pride.
Outdoor
Hot and spicy. See it?
Do it for a Dane
Video series to to encourage people to help out Danes who don’t seem to
appreciate the power of the sun.
Lego
Built kits based on popular search terms.
Lego in print
Love to link to history and iconography.
Gene test kit
To really see if people are born to love the acquired taste of Marmite.
Power of photograpy
Capturing disruption with powerful images for Reporter magazine
Paper innovation
Simple idea executed well, making festivals safe.
Paper innovation
Ikea celebrate positive pregnancy tests with a famiy discount.
Cute AR
Pedigree ensuring you can take an incredible delfie, complete with fun filters for your hound.
Make mistakes
A geniuine apology to what could have been dangerous PR backlash.
Sentiment
Measuring the pride health of every country, by
activiting the pride iconography.
Blackmarket
The law currently prohibits the sale of more than 2 million
varieties of France-grown seeds, thus preventing members of
the general public from enjoying a varied diet. So Carrefour
created a blackmarket.
Limited
Lacoste created a limited-edition polo collection where
threatened species hold the crocodile’s spot. The number of
polos produced for each series corresponds to the remaining
population sizes in the wild.
Ping me
If you have any questions or comments, drop me
a line shingy@oath.com. In the meantime, live your
oath. Mine is Live, Laugh, love.

Shingy