The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity has grown to unprecedented proportions. Featuring appearances from famous speakers, combined with endless events and parties, Cannes Lions has, at its heart, an awards programme that attracted a record 43,101 entries this June.
Patrick Collister, the head of design at Google and founder of Directory, the quarterly showcase of the best direct marketing from around the world, gave a presentation to MAA member agencies to showcase the work that won and the major themes at this year’s Cannes Lions.
Collister emphasised the extent to which Cannes has evolved with an early slide illustrating that Cannes now comprises, in effect, four festivals – health and pharmaceuticals, entertainment, innovation, and advertising – and is characterised by conversations that extend well beyond advertising. He said, “the interesting thing was not one person at Cannes said to me ‘did you see that amazing TV commercial?’ - they were talking about other stuff, a piece of social media, or technology, and whether agencies will survive. And it’s no longer retrospective, now what Cannes is about is anticipatory, the future.
He continued by presenting some of the biggest winning campaigns among the 1,215 he’d calculated had won Lions. These included DAVID Buenos Aires for its ‘Manboobs’ work for MACMA breast cancer awareness right through to BBH New York for its ‘House of Cards” Netflix activity.
Virtual reality
Collister talked about how much of the discussion at Cannes was around “trends that are only just beginning“. He said “artificialiIntelligence was a big topic at Cannes, but it’s only just beginning. The connectedness of things is only just beginning. For virtual reality it’s the same.”
Citing sessions such as Hollywood illustrator Glen Keane bringing the Little Mermaid to life using a VR Tilt Brush, Collister said: “I’d thought of 360 and VR as more complicated filmmaking. It’s not. Filming is about framing and leading people. VR knows the viewer will be a rebel, and it’s about creating world, a completely different way of thinking. VR is only just beginning, it’s a whole new landscape for creative people, one requiring the skill to provide a point of view rather than how to lead people.”
Collaboration
The presentation emphasised that many of the winning campaigns at Cannes 2016 were the result of close collaborations between different kinds of agency and other partners. A prime example was the Grand Prix winner in the Mobile category – The New York Times’ use of VR – which was the result of collaboration between T Brand Studio, Google, GE, MINI, and VRSE. As Collister said of many of the winners: “Without a collection of agencies working as one team, the ideas wouldn’t have been as successful.”
Data
Data, especially connected, big data, was also a big theme at Cannes 2016. Collister said that many of the ad agencies were now talking about their partnerships with the likes of Google and Facebook. He mentioned AMV BBDO’s ‘Personalised Hints’ campaign for Currys PC World as a campaign that brought this theme to life: “Programmatic is just a fancy word for the right message, to the right person, at the right time. Bering able to target people by name and GPS location technology has made media personal.”
Agencies as makers of products
Many of the winners at Cannes 2016 were agencies that created products for brands or to transform consumer experience. Prominent examples included Leo Burnett Sydney’s ‘Brainband’ work for Samsung, J. Walter Thompson New York’s ‘Film Reactor’ for the Tribeca Film Festival and These Days Antwerp’s ‘Breakvertising’ for Royco.
Making the world a better place
Work “for good”, that makes a difference in the world, continued to be a significant theme at Cannes. Collister cited good examples such as TMW Unlimited’s Lynx/CALM work but he also warned that this year there was some evidence of agencies “awards scavenging” by creating “nice but tokenistic work”.
Collister ended the presentation by expressing the view that all the focus on advertising “for good” covers the industry’s anxieties. “Stop apologising,” he urged creative. “More and more people [at Cannes] feel the need to reward creative work for good and it’s getting out of hand. It’s the ad industry apologising for what it does, feeling embarrassed and seeing something where our skills are benefitting people and instantly awarding silver of gold.”
“It’s time we recognised that building brands makes a remarkable contribution to society. Brands are giving people in developing countries new products and services which make their lives demonstrably better than any campaign.”
Ian Darby is head of content at the MAA
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