Cossette, Rethink and WestJet landed four bronze Cyber Lions between them during Wednesday’s gala awards presentation at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
Cossette’s “Heart of the Arctic” for the Royal Canadian Mint won two, Rethink won for Molson Canadian’s “Passport Beer Fridge,” while WestJet won for “WestJet Christmas Miracle: Real-Time Giving.”
“Heart of the Arctic” is an interactive education experience that uses a scavenger hunt to get kids interested in collecting coins.
“It was so beautifully positioned and targeted to its audience,” said Cyber judge Frazer Jelleyman, Taxi’s global chief creative officer. “It’s so easy, when you have the whole of technology at your fingertips, to make something overly complicated. ‘Heart of the Arctic’ was, at its heart, an education piece for children. It was so engaging, it almost felt like a game. As a piece of delivery, it executed perfectly.”
WestJet also earned bronze—a rare client-entered submission, though Mosaic oversaw national PR for the project. After interacting with a Santa character as they departed, travellers arrived at their destination airport to a luggage conveyor covered in the exact gifts they’d asked for at the start of their trip.
“In terms of WestJet’s brand promise of ‘Owners Care,’ there is no better time to show that you’re a giving company than during the holidays,” said Jelleyman. “They used technology in a beautiful way. In fact, technology used for the sake of technology was something that was marked down by the jury. But using tech to create an emotional connection with a brand was marked up. WestJet got that bang on.” Westjet worked in partnership with studio m in Toronto on the concept and execution.
Rethink’s “Beer Fridge” for Molson Canadian (which won Best of Show at this year’s Marketing Awards) got Canada its fourth Cyber bronze. The effort, which centred around a fridge full of beer that could only be opened by a Canadian passport, was well-known by the international jury.
“As an ex-pat myself, one of the things you miss is the beer you grew up with. I get any Canadian missing their Molson Canadian,” said British-born Jelleyman. “Using the passport to open the fridge was, again, a simple piece of technology delivering an emotional connection with the brand.”
While they won’t go down as Canadian wins, the Paris office of Canadian agency Sid Lee picked up one Silver Lion and five Bronze Lions for “The Joker’s Job Interview” for Warner Bros.
Because digital has grown so much and expanded in so many different directions, the Cyber jury can award up to three Grand Prix and did so this year.
One went to “Pharrell Williams–24 Hours of Happy” by Iconoclast Paris for Universal and I Am Other in the Craft and Web categories.
Initially sales of Williams’ single Happy languished after the movie Despicable Me 2 came out (for which it was recorded), so ’24 Hours of Happy,’ “the world’s first 24-hour music video,” was created to provide consumers with a chance to produce their own lip-synced versions of Happy and push sales of the single. The site became a huge hit, generating 10 million visits at the time of the awards submission and sales of the single skyrocketed 14,000% after the site launched.
For the judges, the site rose to the top in many categories, including Interface, User Experience, Overall Aesthetics and Interactive Video, said jury president Susan Bond, CEO and founder of 42 Entertainment in the U.S.
“What was really amazing about it was that it was an experience online that actually drove emotional response and emotional behaviours,” she said. “The interface was seamless and intuitive, [and] the sheer amount of content that was generated on the site was unbelievable.”
In Branded Games, Branded Technology and Integrated, a Grand Prix was given to Chipotle’s “The Scarecrow” by Creative Artists Agency.
To promote its support of sustainable farming and sourcing practices, Chipotle created an animated film featuring a scarecrow saddened by modern industrial farming. The film went viral, but the jury was most impressed with the Scarecrow mobile game that launched with the film.
“Chipotle has kind of reinvented fast food advertising in the U.S.,” said Joe Alexander, chief creative officer of the Martin Agency.
Chipotle won Grand Prix in Cannes two years ago with another animated film, “Back to the Start,” but Alexander said the Mexican fast food chain’s follow-up work was at least as impressive if not more so, citing the craft and the detail in the animation as been extraordinary.
“What really brought this one to another level compared to a couple of years ago was the game aspect and the ability to share that game,” he said. “Playing a game that reinforced that brand message of naturally raised food; we thought that was phenomenal.
“We know the millennial audience—especially young males—would like everything in the world to be gamed. I think this certainly took advantage of that.”
Coming into Cannes, a favourite for multiple Lions was Volvo’s The Epic Split film of Jean-Claude Van Damme doing the splits between two Volvo Trucks. It was just part of the Cyber Grand Prix entry “Live Test Series,” which won in the social categories.
Social was infused through most of the work entered, said Tony Hogqvist, creative director of Swedish agency Perfect Fools. But the jury was impressed with just how much sharing Volvo achieved for a campaign to sell trucks.
“I think it’s unbelievable considering the fact that it’s business-to-business and it is just a truck that made an model upgrade, and made it into the most sexy piece that exists on the planet.”
A recurring theme in the jury press conferences discussing the winning work this week is the power of both creativity and agencies to do work that actually affects positive change in the world.
The theme resurfaced again with the Cyber jury when someone asked about “Sweetie” winning six gold Lions. “Sweetie” is a computer-generated 3D recreation of a 10-year-old girl used to catch pedophiles on webcam sites.
“It has changed our industry, but also the people who work in it,” said Wesley Ter Haar, COO of MediaMonks in the Netherlands.
“One of the discussions we are having this week, most people are saying, ‘I want to do something to change the world and do something special.'”
