These 10 pieces of work will win big at Cannes Lions 2017

These 10 pieces of work will win big at Cannes Lions 2017

It's that time of year again, when the French Riviera will be filled with a few thousand people who look like they were a month late for the world's premier film festival.

This is also the time your LinkedIn feed will be filled with humblebrags about shiny metal things. Inevitably, everyone will talk about how lucky they are to be part of a great team that has won several Lions, hoping that someone will post a comment saying "You're not lucky, you're just super talented!"

I'm winning exactly zero Cannes Lions next week. That's because of some weird law of nature that states that in order to win an award, you need to first have an entry. I haven't got any entries this year.

So what do people with no entries do? They predict.

Here are my predictions of who's going to win a Cannes Lion next week.

Graham, the Human Redesigned to Survive Car Crashes (Australia Transport Accident Commission and Clemenger BBDO Sydney)

So many of us are careless behind the wheel, thinking that we somehow have immunity against accidents. But the truth is, we are highly vulnerable. In order to be truly immune to car crashes, we need to be like Graham.

This was a powerful satirical way to show that we need to be extra careful while we drive. Because the only other option is to have a drastically different human form. This has already been doing the rounds at other shows like the One Show and I would be shocked if this doesn't pick up at Cannes next week.

Through the Dark (Google and R/GA Sydney)

Australian hip hop group Hilltop Hoods collaborated with Google and R/GA Sydney to create an interactive music video that responded to every orientation of your phone to take you through a symphony of light and dark.

What makes it particularly suitable to the message being conveyed is that it's the story of the lead singer's son who was diagnosed with leukemia. The interplay between fear and hope was conveyed as the interplay between light and dark.

In other words, this wasn't technology for the sake of it. But technology as an enabler of a human story. This is likely to win a few Lions in the Cyber and Mobile categories. Particularly in subcategories like Best Use of Music.

Unlimited Stadium (Nike and BBH Singapore)

We've heard the cliche. You are your only competition. The only performance you need to surpass is your own last performance.

But it's only now that it has truly come to life. Nike and BBH Singapore created a "stadium" on the streets of Manila and fitted it with thousands of LEDs that captured and stored your every run, and invited you to compete real-time with an LED representation of your last run.

When you have a client like Nike, there are two ways of reacting to it. You could fold up saying the bar is very high and there's no way you can raise it further. Or you could take it as a challenge and actually succeed in raising the bar further. It's great that so many agencies over the years from Wieden+Kennedy to AKQA to BBH have responded in the second way to this challenge.

Serena Williams Match Point (Gatorade and TBWA/Chiat/Day)

One of the defining qualities of Snapchat is the insanely short time users spend interacting with each post. Despite the fact that each post can last up to 24 hours, the typical user behavior is to swipe faster than they do on an unattractive Tinder profile.

So it's all the more remarkable that Gatorade and TBWA/Chiat/Day created the first game that lived within a Snapchat post and made people play through 20 levels of this game! Each of these 20 levels represented a real Serena Williams Grand Slam victory, strengthening the association with a star athlete.

What's more, this came from an agency that's known for some absolutely legendary TVCs. It shows that the most traditional advertising agencies can embrace digital if they acquire the right mindset and hire the right people.

Why Can't Girls Code (Girls Who Code and McCann Erickson New York)

One of my good friends works with Girls Who Code, an organization that aims to address the startling gender gap in technology companies. So that's a cause I've often thought about. So I liked this hilarious video of trivial reasons why "girls can't code".

We often say that good writing has taken a back seat in the digital age, so it's good to see that witty copy still has a place.

We're the Superhumans (Rio Paralympics, 4Creative London and Blink London)

So may of us attempt retro-futurism but never quite pull it off. It ends up looking dated in a bad way. It requires delicate craftsmanship to try this visual style and still manage to do it well. These guys achieved just that. I expect it to pocket a whole lot of Film and Film Craft Lions next week.

Nosulus Rift (Ubisoft and Buzzman Paris)

Ubisoft was launching its South Park game, and one of its chief characters was known for his rather powerful... ass.

To bring this to life in a truly immersive way, Ubisoft worked with fragrance experts to create the perfect fart and infuse it into a Nosulus Rift experience. A true work of fart.

Unlimited You (Nike and Wieden+Kennedy Portland)

It's a run-of-the-mill TVC until it ends. Then it begins.

Like My Addiction (Addict Aide and BETC Paris)

Frankly, my dear, I don't Instagram, said Clark Gable famously. But those days are gone with the wind. Today, Instagram is where we all live our lives.

Which means, if our friends' lives are going wrong in any way, the signs are all there on Instagram.

Fearless Girl (State Street Global Advisors and McCann Erickson New York)

There's one every year. Dove Sketches. Dumb Ways to Die. The Ice Bucket Challenge. Something that comes by and sweeps Lions by the truckload. Even before we descend on Cannes, the question on everyone's minds is not whether it will win, but how many?

This year, that honor goes to Fearless Girl. It's probably the most single-minded representation of the fight for gender equality we've seen in a long time.

It's a relief that the team at McCann Erickson New York didn't go ahead with their original idea of a fearless cow facing off against the bull. "What's your gender equality symbol?" "Erm, it's a cow." That wouldn't have ended well.


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