The final three shortlists of the 58th International Festival of Creativity were released Friday morning and Canada appeared only once.
BBDO and Wrigley’s “Touch the Rainbow” YouTube videos for Skittles are on the Titanium & Integrated shortlist. One of the videos already won Cyber Gold Wednesday night and the campaign, with five videos in total, showed up on the Film shortlist Thursday, the second-last day of the 2011 Cannes Lions. (Read the BBDO entry here.)
The Titanium and Integrated competition has changed a number of times since its introduction in 2003 by Dan Wieden to recognize groundbreaking ideas in advertising. That year the award went to Fallon Minneapolis for the BMW short film series “The Hire.” Since then the competition has changed names from Titanium to Integrated and then back to Titanium again before becoming Titanium & Integrated in 2007.
Today, Titanium & Integrated is effectively two competitions in one. Submitted integrated campaigns using three or more media will be reviewed by the jury—which has Bob Scarpelli of DDB as president and includes Taxi’s Paul Lavoie (officially representing the U.S.)—for Gold, Silver and Bronze Integrated Campaign Lions.
That integrated work will also be considered for Titanium Lions, though the Titanium contenders could include non-integrated submissions.
According to the festival, Titanium Lions recognize “work that causes the industry to stop in its tracks and reconsider the way forward.” The jury does not choose Golds, Silvers or Bronzes, only Titanium Lions.
The official festival position is that a Titanium Grand Prix will be “elusive” and given out only “occasionally,” though one has been awarded each year since 2007: Crispin Porter + Bogusky’s “Twelpforce” for Best Buy last year, “Obama for America” in 2009, “Uniqlock” for Uniqlo in 2008 and the “Xbox King Games” for Burger King in 2007 (also by Crispin Porter).
Canadian agencies completed 19 Titanium & Integrated entries this year, up from 10 in 2010. From the 480 original entries this year, 32 made the shortlist. Previous Canadian entries to make the shortlist include JWT’s “BrandAid” project last year, Ogilvy & Mather and Dove’s “Body and Soul” in 2009, and Taxi’s “15 Below” and O&M’s “Diamond Shreddies” the year before that.
Film Craft and Creative Effectiveness shortlists were also released today.
The Film Craft Lions were introduced in 2010. Canada made just seven submissions to the competition in 2011, down from 14 last year. The shortlist is 116 entries long from a starting pool of 1,322 entries (up from 1,110 in 2010).
The Creative Effectiveness Lions competition is new for 2011, introduced to honour work that “has shown a measurable and proven impact on a client’s results.” To be eligible, work had to win a Lion or make one of the shortlists in 2010. PricewaterhouseCoopers was called in to review all results. The jury, which lacks a Canadian representative, will score the work based on strategy (25%), idea (25%) and results (50%). A total of 142 entries were made, just one from Canada and only 10 entries made the shortlist.
The winners will be announced at the final awards gala of the festival on Saturday night.
Watch for a special edition of Marketing Daily delivered to subscribers’ inboxes shortly after 3:30 p.m. EST Saturday.
