Astral Out-of-Home’s seventh annual Carte Blanche for Creatives competition has gone to pot, with an ad demonstrating the dangers of driving high scooping one of three top prizes.
The annual competition is judged in three regions — Toronto, Quebec and Western Canada — and invites creative teams to design an out-of-home ad for a client of their choice using one of three pre-determined Astral Out-of-Home products (transit shelter in Toronto, vertical board in Quebec and a large-format digital board in Western Canada). This year’s competition attracted 341 submissions, a record high.
An execution from the John St. creative team of Jenny Luong and Martin Stinnissen for client the Ontario Ministry of Transportation won gold in Toronto. The ad used a digital transit shelter ad that sent up puffs of smoke between the two glass panels, partially obscuring the message “Driving high impairs your vision.”
Second prize went to the LG2 creative duo of Zachary Bautista and Ariel Riske for their “Theft Coverage” execution for client Desjardins Insurance. The execution showed only bolts where a transit shelter should be, but left a single end panel bearing the message “Theft coverage.”
Third prize went to Andrea Romanelli and Jonathan Taylor from Zulu Alpha Kilo for their ad “Convertible Shelter” for Audi’s A3 Cabriolet. The transit shelter features a retractable roof that can be automatically lowered when it rains, accompanied by an image of the convertible and the message “ready for anything.”
First place in the Western Canada competition went to Rethink’s Sean O’Conner and Melissa Haebe for “The Molson Live Beerboard” execution for client Molson Canada.
The ad used a large format digital billboard to show the score of NHL games by featuring beer glasses bearing each team’s logo, with the beer level indicating the number of goals each team had scored.
Second prize went to another Rethink team, Leia Rogers and Morgan Tierney, for their “Anytime” execution for streaming video-on-demand service Shomi. The ads showed titles in the Shomi library that coincided with the time of day (ie: The Breakfast Club, Rush Hour and Midnight Cowboy).
Third prize went to the One Twenty Three West creative duo of Kate Roland and Allison Chambers for their “Art Any Time” execution for the Vancouver Art Gallery. The campaign showed works from the gallery’s collection – one per minute – and used the board’s 24-hour clock to show the year in which it was created.
The winning team from each region will attend the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, while their clients will be offered a $50,000 campaign on the Astral Out-of-Home network. The competition’s Quebec winners will be announced on May 26.
