It was a spectacle that saw Elon Musk turn on the charm, where there were rumours of Taylor Swift passing by, and at which a new anti-bullshit AI bot was announced.
From Dove’s wide-raging influencer campaign, Golin’s creative audio spot for Specsavers, and of course Adam&Eve slurping up the rewards of Pot Noodle, take a look at this season’s top winners:
WPP regains Creative Company of the Year
WPP has regained the title of creative company of the year. WPP agencies collected a total of 160 Lions, including a Titanium, 6 Grand Prix, 27 gold, silver and 83 bronze lions, with winners representing 41 different companies.
Meanwhile, Ogilvy won Network of the Year. It also clenched a Grand Prix for Coca-Cola’s Recycle Me, while Ogilvy PR secured the top prize for CeraVe’s Michael CeraVe.
For the first time ever Coca-Cola was also named Brand of the Year. Meanwhile, Unilever was named marketer of the year.
Edelman becomes first Legacy PR agency to win Titanium Lion
The global agency is the first to win the award, which highlights work that breaks new ground in branded creativity, for its “The Move to Minus 15” campaign for logistics firm DP World.
The work challenged a 100-year accepted standard in the frozen supply industry which has set freight cargo temperatures at -18 degrees. DP World and Edelman created a film to highlight how the temperature could be raised to -15.
Following the research being made publicly available, in a period of 15 days 60% of the global shipping container industry had joined ‘The Move to Minus 15’ coalition
Other wins for the behemoth agency include four gold lions, six silver lions and five bronze lions.
Dove’s Turn Your Back campaign wins gold for creative effectiveness
Ogilvy UK, with David Madrid, teamed up to deliver a campaign which saw influencers literally turn their back on filters in #TurnYourBack, as part of its wider self-esteem driven work.
The Bold Glamour filter, which was used over 15 million times has won gold for creative effectiveness.
Specsavers ‘Misheard’ wins PR’s top prize in industry first
Golin made history by taking the first ever PR Lions Grand Prix awarded to a PR agency with sole creative credit. The inventive audio campaign which played on Rick Astley’s often misheard ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’, saw searches related to hearing loss double.
Ogilvy PR takes home Social and Influencer Grand Prix
Ogilvy PR New York has secured the top prize for social and influencer with its ‘Michael CeraVe’ campaign for skincare firm CeraVe, in which the film star claims to have invented the brand’s premium moisturising cream.
The ad famously broke during this year’s Super Bowl and has provided the L’Oréal-owned brand with 30 billion earned impressions, ending up as the most successful Super Bowl ad according to numerous metrics.
Bronze winners in the social and influencer category included Edelman New York and London, Japanese food brand Ajinomoto and Publicis’ LePub Milan.
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Adam&EveDDB emerges as UK front runner
London agency Adam&EveDDB has emerged as UK’s front runner as this year’s Cannes Lions, securing one gold and one silver in the Media Lions category for its ‘If you’re into it, it’s the V&A’ campaign for the famous museum, on which PHD handled media planning and buying.
Adam&EveDDB also took home a bronze award for its highly controversial ‘Sorry for Slurping’ ad for Pot Noodle, which also garnered a silver award in the Audio and Radio Lions earlier in the week.
Dove’s heartstring-tugging ‘The cost of beauty’ campaign by Ogilvy secured another bronze award for the UK, with the campaign acting as a three-way collaboration between the UK, US and Canada involving Ogilvy London, Mindshare New York and Ogilvy Toronto.
