A Good ol' fashioned sweep

Spikes Asia and Dubai Lynx, the advertising awards show for the Asia Pacific and Middle East regions, took place this month, and both of them had something that’s been missing from Cannes Lions for a while — campaigns that swept the boards.

At Spikes Asia on 14 March, it was VML Melbourne’s Fitchix campaign for the Honest Eggs Co, for which they printed eggs with the average step count of the chickens that laid them to demonstrate the brand’s commitment to animal welfare.

Fitchix won five Grands Prix in total, in Brand Experience & Activation, Creative Commerce, Healthcare, Integrated and Outdoor.

Dentsu Tokyo’s digital stamp-collecting campaign for Japan Railways Groups (My Japan Railway ) also went on a winning streak, taking Grands Prix in the Industry Craft, Digital Craft and Direct categories.

At Dubai Lynx , Leo Burnett Jeddah’s campaign for Saudia airlines, for which it manufactured and gave away prayer beads coated with tea tree oil to promote hygiene at one of the world’s largest gatherings of people, won four Grands Prix.

ProtecTasbih took the Grand Prix in the Brand Experience & Activation, Design, Direct and PR categories.

VML also had a good time at Dubai Lynx, which took place on 8 March, collecting three Grands Prix for its I See Coke campaign for Coca-Cola. The campaign, created by VML’s Dubai and New York offices, encouraged people to tell their Alexa devices whenever they spotted a can of coke in a movie or a TV series to win a discount, and won the top award in the Creative Commerce, Digital, and Radio & Audio categories.

Except for ProtecTasbih, all of the campaigns mentioned above are too old to be entered into any category at Cannes this year except Creative Effectiveness (which rewards long-term results), so this list isn’t much help when it comes to predicting where the big Lions are going to go in June. Still, it’s interesting to see the kind of work that gets rewarded in regions beyond Europe and the US.

Campaign of the Week /

Toronto agency Angry Butterfly demonstrated what Dave Trott would call predatory thinking, to sidestep Canada’s strict cannabis advertising regulations and promote weed retailer Stok’d.

The Next To Stok’d ads starred proprietors whose businesses happened to be next door to one of the Stok’d stores, who then proceeded to talk about their own products and services while making lots of marijuana-related puns.

The ads usually finished on a shot of the exterior of the proprietors’ stores, with the cameras panning over to and then lingering on the Stok’d shop.

As Trott would say, challenges are often great examples to get creative. Read our full insight here. Contagious .

Why fashion brands don't have the luxury of 'eating the rich' /

At the end of 2023, Weber Shandwick’s Tom Beckman wrote an article for Contagious calling for luxury brands to become more accessible to avoid obsolescence.

Oskar Zander, a client manager and digital strategist at TBS Mediabyra in Stockholm, thinks that they have the opposite problem.

As globalisation lifts hundreds of millions of people into the middle classes, fashion houses and other high-end brands will have to work hard to maintain the exclusivity that is the foundation of their appeal. Read more here. Contagious .

The benefits of psychotic optimism /

‘When we opened the flagship fully-branded petrol station we released doves from a chillybin. For some inexplicable reason, they all stayed low and flew directly into oncoming traffic. It was disaster after disaster after disaster. But no disaster could stop us.’

Colenso BBDO’s chief creative, Simon Vicars, explains why off-the-shelf optimism just doesn’t cut it in the advertising industry. To make it past the endless edits and setbacks, you have to be deranged. Contagious .