While the Promo & Activation competition had a silver lining for Canadian agencies, Canadian firms were shut out of the other three Lions competitions on Monday, despite promising showings on the Direct, PR and Creative Effectiveness shortlists.
The Direct contest saw 13 golds awarded to 11 agencies. The Grand Prix went to McCann Melbourne for the massive viral hit “Dumb Ways to Die.” The animated musical video was created as a Metro Trains safety message for young people. The video itself has earned nearly 50 million views on YouTube (20 million in the first week alone). Metro saw its accident rate drop by 21% following the song’s success.
The video became the most-shared video in the world, according to McCann, and the song found fans beyond Australia’s borders – it was released on iTunes and was played by radio stations as part of their music programming. It has been parodied or covered on YouTube more than 200 times.
More important to the campaign’s goals, however, is that more than 1 million people who saw the video and were directed to its website took a pledge to be safer near trains.
PR
“Dumb Ways to Die” also won a Grand Prix in PR. It was among the 20 gold medalists in the competition.
David Gallagher, senior partner and CEO, Europe at Ketchum, said “Dumb Ways To Die” was an early and clear favourite among jurors. “Safety is not a fun message, and the way to reach children in particular needs to be fun, engaging and shareable,” he said.
Gallagher called the program a big evolution from the press releases that dominate so much of PR work. The song was “a great demonstration of where this business is going” towards shareable content that drive action and discussion.
Creative Effectiveness
The still relatively new Creative Effectiveness Lions were also handed out Monday night, rewarding previous Lion winners who re-submitted their work with case studies that demonstrated outstanding business results built on creativity and strategy. Only seven entries won trophies in Creative Effectiveness, including the Grand Prix winner – Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam for Heineken’s “Legendary Journey” campaign.
The campaign is ongoing (the video below is a tongue-in-cheek ‘making of’ for one of its more popular executions) and has become a global brand platform. The jury would not divulge too much detail about Heineken’s business results, but did say it grew market share “substantially.”
While Canada did not have any finalists in this contest, it was one of the more active participants, submitting the fourth-most entries (8) behind the U.S. (25), U.K. (14) and Australia (11). While no one spoke specifically to Canadian contenders, there was a general call from the jury for better submissions.
Because of the nature of this particular award, results account for 50% of an entry’s final score. The creative idea and strategy account for 25% apiece.
Lori Senecal, chairman and CEO of KBS+ (who sat as a jurist without a country affiliation, but is a Canadian), said jury members sought hard numbers that often weren’t there.
“There was a lot of passion about two of the Canadian entries,” said Senecal, who declined to be more specific. “The issue was some of them didn’t have enough time to accumulate the amount of tangible results to really put it over the finish line… We needed to see substantial evidence of the results, and in some cases there were just projections of results.”
