Cannes Lions changed the name of its festival this year to emphasize creativity–the “International Festival of Creativity” rather than “of advertising.” But it also introduced a new competition to underscore the connection between creativity and good business results.
The first Creative Effectiveness Lions were handed out Saturday evening. Only six awards were given from a total of 142 entries. There was one Canadian entry but it did not make the shortlist. Judges reviewed case documents up to 3,000 words in length and scored them based on strategy (25%), idea (25%) and results (50%). Only work that was either shortlisted or won a Lion last year qualified.
“This Festival is 100% about creativity,” said Festival CEO Phillip Thomas, at the morning press conference to announce the winners. “We felt that for pieces of work to have already won in a previous year proves their creative credentials.”
Jury president and TBWA\Worldwide chairman Jean-Marie Dru said he’s been advocating for an effectiveness category since he first attended Cannes in 1973. “Nearly 40 years I’ve been trying to convince everybody that there is a fantastic link between creativity and effectiveness.”
The big winner in the first competition was “Sandwich” from PepsiCo and Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO London. According to the overview document submitted with the entry, Pepsi wanted to prove that single-serving bags of Walkers potato chips could make any lunch sandwich more exciting. To do that, it set out to make the town of Sandwich more exciting through a series of surprise celebrity appearances. Pamela Anderson poured beers in a pub and soccer star Frank Lampard practiced with a local boys team. With a budget of 2.5 million pounds the goal was to increase revenue by 15%–the program ended up increasing revenue 26%.
“There was no discussion because the vote was 18 to 1,” said Dru of the judges support for “Sandwich” as Grand Prix.
Reflecting on the overall success of the competition in its launch year, Dru said the jury felt the case studies weren’t as well written as they need to be going forward.
“I’m not saying they are not solid. Some are solid, but not enough,” said Dru. Links between goals and the results were sometimes not clear enough, he said. A small group of the judges will work on new guidelines for the competition that will help both Festival organizers and entering companies next year.
The jury took special interest in the question that asked entrants to account for other developments that might have contributed to the results. The objective was to ensure as much as possible that it was the creative and the communications that drove results, not other factors like price discounting, for example.
“The Pepsi case was so strong on that,” said Sally Dickerson, managing director of BrandScience in London and one of the judges.
“That was one of the questions that knocked out quite a few people. People wanting to believe it was the communication but not going far enough to prove behind a reasonable doubt that it was communications.”
“In the six cases that were Lions we believe it was 100% clear that the effectiveness came from the communications,” said Dru.
The Creative Effectiveness Lions were handed out along with those for Film, Titanium & Integrated and Film Craft. Aside from winning an Integrated Grand Prix for Bing, Droga5 also won the top prize in the Film Craft Competition for “After Hours Athlete” for sportswear brand Puma. The ad is a tongue-in-cheek homage to the games people play–darts, pool, bowling etc.–when out for a night on the town with friends (below).
“This was the clear winner,” said jury president Keith Rose, director at Velocity Films. “It wasn’t one particular craft, it was the sum of the parts.”
Asked if the winners represent any trends in the industry, Rose said there has been a return to the fundamentals of filmmaking craft – lighting, casting, location, art direction, and costume design–and away from big budgets on post production popular in the past.
“The 30-second format seems to be dead and gone,” he said, though he later qualified that with an acknowledgement that the U.S. “still lives and dies” with 30s and so they’ll live on though they may be on life support. (Later in the day, Film jury president Tony Granger told reporters he did not believe 30s were dead. “There were some very powerful 30s,” he said.)
The Film Craft Gold Winners list was dominated by Wieden + Kennedy which won six Gold Lions for three different spots: from the Amsterdam office there was Nike’s “Write the Future” created for the 2010 World Cup and “Entrance” for Heineken while the Portland office won for the two-minute long, Eminem-starring “Born of Fire” for Chrysler that debuted during the Super Bowl.
The Film Craft Lions were introduced in 2010. There were seven entries from Canada, but none made the shortlist.
