Last year at Cannes, the big winner was humour, edging out purpose with a slew of big hitting campaigns of the likes of McDonald’s’ ‘Raised Arches’ and Marmite’s ‘Baby Scan’.
However, whether its campaigning against damaging influencer culture, or inventive accessibility campaigns, or campaigns that simply give a bit of recognition to the less glamorous (yep that’s media planners) this year has highlighted that the industry has not forgotten purpose.
On the last day of Cannes, we round up the biggest purpose wins from across the festival.
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.
RNIB and MullenLowe partner with Cannes Lions to reward alt text campaigns
Honouring the increasing diversity focus of campaign over the last 12 months, the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) and creative agency MullenLowe are set to introduce a new Cannes award that celebrates the use of alt text in campaigns.
Alt text is of great help to visually impaired people as it offers descriptions of online images to help people better visualise them. An out-of-home RNIB campaign launched in March spotlighted its numerous benefits.
Set to form part of the ‘Craft’ subcategory from next year, the RNIB and MullenLowe have created a campaign speficifally designed to run during this year’s event, with alt text describing famous winners from years gone by.
Spotify’s ode to media planning secures Digital Craft Grand Prix
The streaming service’s advertising division has taken home the Digital Craft Grand Prix after its recent campaign honouring the importance of media planning clearly hit home.
Created by FCB New York and produced by London-based Uncharted Limbo Collective, ‘Spreadbeats’ the work check all the boxes in the awards three criteria: transformative idea, innovative implementation and emotion.
Describing the work as “very transformative”, Jury president Kentaro Kimura of Hakuhodo Global said: “The work converted a very common, dry, boring B2B media plan spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel into a lively and very exciting music video.”
Digital Craft Bronze Awards for Dove/Edelman and Lusion
The UK also picked up two bronze awards in this same category, with Dove’s ‘Code my Crown’ by Edelman giving people the opportunity to create realistic black hairstyle in video games, whilst Bristol-based agency Lusion secured the award for its website design.
‘Code My Crown’ was created with the Open Source Afro Hair Library, an extensive 3D database of black hairstyles to give coders and developers the chance to make hairstyles more authentic and representative.
