Tribal strikes gold while John St., Grip, One Twenty Three West claim Silver and Bronze Lions
McDonald’s Canada and Tribal DDB earned Canada its first gold Lion at the 60th Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity Wednesday night, taking the stage to acknowledge jury admiration for “Our Food. Your Questions.”
The campaign also won two Bronze Lions, leading the pack of four Canadian agencies that took home Cyber awards today.
“Our Food. Your Questions,” a consumer engagement platform centred around the QSR’s website and social network, was considered a one of Canada’s best chances for gold this week and previously won a silver Lion in the Promo & Activation competition.
While the jury felt the technical execution of the work was good, that was not the reason for its golden evaluation. Multiple judges agreed that the client’s courage to be so transparent and open to criticism carried the work to the podium.
“It was really more about the client. It was about the idea and the courage,” said Nellie Kim, a creative director at John St. and a Cyber jury member.
“It was a corporate website, and people were floored by a big company like McDonald’s doing something like that. I think a lot of Canadians were really surprised, and that was recognized by the international jury,” said Kim.
Ulises Valencia, vice-president, creative and co-founder of Grupo W, said this kind of transparency will likely become the norm among large corporate brands. “Coca-cola, those kinds of brands are really exposed to the mindset of the consumer. It has to make these kinds of decisions to be open. The website is incredible. It’s incredibly intelligent in my opinion”
Grip Ltd. won a silver Cyber Lion for “The Movie Out Here,” the full-length feature film it shot for Labatt Breweries of Canada that included an online component prior to the film’s launch. Brand fans could track the film’s pre-production, audition for roles and vote for shooting locations in their home towns.
“It was a really well integrated cyber campaign,” said Kim. “There were a lot of consumers who created the experience that eventually became the movie… It was less about the movie, more about a strong digital campaign.”
A silver Lion was awarded to “Carly’s Cafe,” a website created by John St. to help raise awareness for autism and to promote the book Carly’s Voice written by agency president Arthur Fleischmann and his daughter Carly. The online venture aims to illustrate common, day-to-day experiences of an autistic person. The agency’s “Electriphobia” campaign for Mitsubishi’s I-Miev electric car also won an award – a bronze.
The new-ish Vancouver ad agency 123W rounded out the Canadian Cyber Lion winners, earning a bronze for its own website that uses video content in place of text, images or, really, anything else typically found on a company’s site. Even the contact page is a video.
The Cyber jury, led by Bob Greenberg, founder of R/GA, awarded two Grand Prix awards: “Oreo Daily Twist” by DraftFCB New York, and “The Beauty Inside” by Pereira & O’Dell.
For Oreo’s 100th anniversary, the cookie brand released a new image every day for 100 days that had been designed that day based on something topical or popular at the moment. Launching with a rainbow-filled cookie for gay pride, ensuing executions noted movie launches and the Mars rover landing.
“It really spread tremendously, using every platform available, throughout the world,” said Greenberg. “It brought a brand back to life in a way that people hadn’t seen before. People fell in love again with the cookie. If you can do that for a brand that’s been around for 100 years, that’s pretty interesting.”
Intel and Toshiba’s “Beauty Inside” online film series featured a character who woke up with a different body every day and kept a video diary of his condition on a Toshiba laptop. With high production values and a handful of Hollywood actors, the project also asked consumers to record themselves performing scenes as the protagonist making video diaries.
The “incredible storytelling capability” of the work “really ties in very specifically to the ‘Intel Inside’ campaign,” promoting the advantages of Intel’s product which usually lie unseen within computing devices, explained Greenberg.
