The Best Advertising In The World

Cannes concluded this past weekend. Lions were handed out to much of the work we all passed around throughout the year. Or not. Which may have been the case as many of the world’s top-awarded ideas went to small and mid-sized advertisers from across the world.

For advertising, Cannes seeks to award two things.

First, the calibur of the idea.

For this, Dove’s “Real Beauty Sketches” took the show’s overall top honor with the Grand Prix Titanium. Ogilvy Brazil created something special.

Second, the execution.

Much like how the CEO of Wells Fargo recently said that “they could leave their strategic plan on an airplane and it wouldn’t matter because it all comes down to execution,” Cannes recognizes how well an idea was put together and the seemlessness of its integration. For this, Melbourne Metro Trains and McCann won big for “Dumb Ways To Die” taking top honors for PR, Direct, Radio, Film and Integration.

Beyond these top two overall winners the calibur of work went deep.

Technology was pushed in some pretty innovative ways.

And it’s always worth remembering that, overall, creatively-awarded work delivers more results than non-awarded work.

Here are some favorites from the festival…

 

Grand Prix Promo / Sport Club Recife / Ogilvy Brazil

Creating immortal fans; the first organ donor card for a football team.

 

Print / Apple / TBWA Media Arts, LA

Simplicity: the cover of the magazine already added on the iPad mini ad inside.

Grand Prix Film / Intel / Pereira O’Dell, SF

A complex campaign that celebrates the beauty inside of people. The case study video tells the story best:

 

Grand Prix Digital / Oreo / DraftFCB NY

To celebrate a 100-year birthday, the brand created 100 pieces of content for 100 days, completely responsive to pop culture.

 

Grand Prix Film Craft / Channel 4 / In-house

Film Craft honors the production of the piece; reportedly, Cannes jurors loved his one more with each viewing.

 

Grand Prix Mobile / Smart Communications, Philippines / In-house

Watch this case study video and then marvel at how involved this was to do.

 

Grand Prix Innovation / Cinder Coding Platform / The Barbarian Group

The ad industry has created its own open-source platform for programming graphics, audio, video and computational geometry all together.

 

Creative Effectiveness / Heineken / Wieden+Kennedy, Amsterdam

To win this, entrants submit a 40-page paper with metrics which is vetted by PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

 

Grand Prix For Good / WWF / BBDO Dusseldorf

Just the simple cleverness of this.

 

Grand Prix Outdoor / IBM / Ogilvy

Outdoor advertising as functional and helpful.

The complete list of winners can be found here.