This year’s winners at Cannes Lions had their fair share of creativity, supplemented with a healthy dose of AI, showing how the industry is moving to a more tech-focused approach. This is a sentiment echoed by the festival itself when it dropped its Mobile category, due to the omnipresence of the device across all campaigns.
But as indicated by the winner of the category that replaced it – the Luxury Lion – not everything is AI. The Loewe x Suna Fujita collaboration brought handcrafted ceramics to life in a stop-motion video. While some campaigns, including ‘Adoptable. By Pedigree’, ‘Voice 2 Diabetes’ and ‘Magnetic Stories’ leaned into AI, their reason for success is still coded in humanity.
Nothing brings the human element quicker into a campaign than working with actual humans – celebrities – as seen in ‘Michael CeraVe’ and ‘The Misheard Version’. The two campaigns also bring in the talk of the
town this year – humour. The success of this can be seen through the Titanium Lions Grand Prix winner: DoorDash All-The-Ads.
Read through for more on all the Grand Prix winners.
Audio and Radio & PR Lions
Specsavers “The Misheard Version” by Golin London
The campaign saw Specsavers conduct a mass hearing test using a special song. The brand partnered with Rick Astley to re-record ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ with lyrics the public has misheard for years, including phrases such as “Then I’m going to run around with dessert spoons”. The work was commended by the jury both for its creativity and “reckless ambition”. Built on the basis that people are often reluctant to get a hearing test because ‘it makes them feel old’, the test was used to urge people to get checked and make hearing loss less scary.
Brand Experience and Activation Lion
Pop Tarts “The First Edible Mascot” by Weber Shandwick New York
This campaign featured Pop Tarts entering the world of US college football brand sponsorships, which are dominated by generic mascots, before introducing an edible mascot to “die for sponsorships’ sins”. The brand then sacrificed its mascot to the winning team, with the victors enjoying the edible mascot as a post-game snack.
Creative Business Transformation Lion
Phillips “Refurb” by LePub Amsterdam
This work showed that after the Christmas period is over, more than 10 million returned gifts end up in landfill. Phillips promoted returned products as an exclusive range to raise awareness for the hidden issue of e-waste. Phillips only sold refurbished products till they were sold out during the last festive season. Some 52,000 refurbed gifts were sold and about 185 tonnes of waste were avoided.
Creative B2B Lion
JCDecaux “Meet Mariana Prieto” by David Madrid
Brands consider subway media to be not as relevant, effective, or attractive as regular street OOH advertising, despite the number of people commuting daily. JCDecaux wanted to make a campaign to convince brands that this media truly works and to make them reinvest in it again.
To prove the power of out-of-home, it turned a 100-year-old grandma into an Instagram hero – using unbooked media spaces to spotlight her posts.
Creative Data Lion
Mastercard “Room for Everyone” by McCann Poland, Warsaw
Mastercard aimed to shift the negative perceptions of Ukrainian refugees by highlighting the positive economic contributions of Ukrainian-owned businesses in Poland. It created a new app, Room for Everyone, that used Mastercard data to show that Polish and Ukrainian businesses are more successful when they work side by side in Poland.
Film Lions
Sydney Opera House “Play It Safe” by the Monkeys, Accenture Song, Sydney
The film celebrated the building’s 50 years of history and how it has been home to the arts including ballet, opera and comedy. It condensed this into a four-and-a-half-minute musical number co-created by Tim Minchin.
Orange “Women’s Football” by Marcel Paris
The two-minute film featured atmospheric clips of what appeared to be men’s football. But it is later revealed that it was actually women’s football and CGI had been used to illustrate how both forms of the game are equally exciting.
Creative Effectiveness Lion
Heinz “It Has to Be Heinz” by Rethink
Heinz was at risk of being undercut by generic, off-brand ketchup. To re-ignite an emotional connection with consumers, the brand created a series of work over five years to show that “It has to be Heinz”. It ran a total of eight campaigns over the period – all of them to prove, of all the thousands of tomato ketchups in the world, that there was only one genuine ketchup. The ads ranged from asking people and AI to draw ketchup
(they ended up drawing Heinz) to calling out restaurants for ketchup fraud when they fill Heinz bottles with generic ketchup.
Creative Strategy Lion
KPN “A Piece of Me” by Dentsu Creative Amsterdam
This campaign for the Dutch telecoms company shone a light on the fast-growing issue of online shaming and its impact on young people’s mental health. The campaign’s title referred to a song and music video that told the true stories of Gen Z. The track was streamed more than 10 million times and helped change the law against sending intimate images without consent.
Design Lion
Sol Cement “Sightwalks” by Circus Grey
The cement brand enhanced tactile paving – lines on pavements that help visually impaired people navigate – with vertical lines to help users recognise their destination. This allowed visually impaired people to recognise the exact business in front of them by tapping their cane.
Digital Craft Lion
Spotify Advertising “Spreadbeats” FCB New York
In a bid for media planners’ budgets and positioning itself as a platform for video ads, Spotify created the first music video coded and experienced within an Excel spreadsheet. The music video follows a green cell through different sheets of ASCII and Unicode artwork to a dance track.
Direct & Entertainment – Gaming Lions
Xbox “The Everyday Tactician” by McCann London
The push was built on the idea that football fans often think they can be superior managers to the pros. It was led by Xbox kicking off a recruitment drive using the Football Manager 2024 video game, the winner of which was invited to join Bromley FC as a tactician.
Entertainment Lion
WhatsApp “We are Ayenda” by Creative X Palo Alto and Modern Arts Los Angeles
It shows how the Afghan youth women’s football team used WhatsApp to orchestrate their escape from their country after it fell to the Taliban.
Entertainment – Music Lion
Johnnie Walker “Errata at 88” by Almap BBDO Sao Paulo
Integrated campaign “Errata at 88” promoted Diageo’s Johnnie Walker and centred on giving a platform to the overlooked singer Alaíde Costa. The campaign was designed to grab people’s attention by presenting Costa as “The Forgotten Mother of Bossa Nova”. The artist helped to create the Bossa Nova genre but was overlooked because of her skin colour and social status.
Entertainment – Sport Lion
Orange “Women’s Football” by Marcel Paris
The telco’s ad superimposed popular French male footballers onto real footage of female players to highlight viewers’ potential preconceptions of female football. The ad used deepfake technology to prove that the only difference between men’s and women’s football is the prejudice faced by women players.
Creative Commerce & Sustainable Development Goals Lions
The Renault Group “Cars to Work” by Publicis Conseil
The campaign was designed in response to the lack of opportunity faced by many French people trying to find work due to lack of a car or public transport. The automotive firm provided cars for free to people during job trials, which they would have to pay for only once they had attained full-time employment.
Film Craft Lion
Hornbach “The Square Metre” by Heimat\TBWA
The furniture retailer responded to the cost-of-living crisis with a pantomimic film showing the endless possibilities of a square metre. The 60-second film showed a man getting ready for his day in a single square metre space, which the in the spot transforms around him depending on his needs, from a shower to a small dining room table.
Glass Lion for Change
Unilever “Transition Body Lotion” by Ogilvy Singapore
The campaign promoted Vaseline Transition Body Lotion, which was developed for trans-gender women, whose skin can suffer from greater dryness due to hormonal imbalances.
Health & Wellness Lion
Dramamine “The Last Barf Bag” by FCB Chicago
Anti-nausea brand Dramamine used a museum exhibit and documentary to bid farewell to the sick bags it claims to have made obsolete.
Grand Prix for Good
Reporters Without Borders “The First Speech” by Innocean Berlin
The films – “The First Speech – Russia,”, “The First Speech – Turkey” and “The First Speech – Venezuela” – all aim to challenge autocratic politicians. They shine a light on the optimistic words used by modern autocrats when they became presidents, but who also end up turning against human rights and independent journalism. The ads end with the tagline: “The loss of freedom is never obvious at first.”
Industry Craft Lion
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung “The 100th Edition” by Scholz & Friends
“The 100th Edition” was the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s 100th addition to its photo series “Brilliant Minds”, which began 25 years ago. The photos have been of famous and notable people reading Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in environments representing their work and achievements. “The 100th Edition” featured 102-year-old Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer.
Innovation Lion
KVI Brave Fund “Voice 2 Diabetes” by Klick Health Toronto
The medical equipment company developed a diabetes diagnostic solution that enables assessment through voice samples. By examining features like pitch and intensity, the tool allows everyone with a mobile phone to receive a diagnosis through voice analysis.
Lions Health Grand Prix For Good
UN Women “Child Wedding Cards” by Impact BBDO, Dubai
Members of the National Assembly of Pakistan received an invitation to a fictional child’s wedding. Through a wedding card that would suit a child’s wedding, designed entirely by children, UN Women persuaded the Federal Islamic Court to raise the minimum age of marriage to 18.
Luxury and Lifestyle Lion
Loewe x Suna Fujita by Loewe Madrid
Spanish fashion house Loewe was awarded the first Luxury and Lifestyle Lions Grand Prix for a short produced by American stop-motion animator Andrea Animates, promoting a collaboration with Japanese ceramic studio Suna Fujita.
Media Lion
Mercado Libre “Handshake Hunt” by Gut Sao Paulo
The e-commerce website held a Black Friday treasure hunt inspired by its logo, a handshake. When people shook hands in TV shows, a QR code appeared onscreen directing viewers to contextualised offers from the retailer. The spot led to people hunting for the handshakes in TV shows.
Pharma Lion
Siemens Healthineers “Magnetic Stories” by Area 23
“Magnetic Stories” turned the intimidating sounds of MRI machines into engaging children’s audiobooks to reduce young patients’ anxiety. The brand collected the different sound sequences from the machine and synced them with story moments in books.
Print and Publishing Lion
Coca-Cola “Recycle Me” by Ogilvy New York
“Recycle Me” showed Coca-Cola’s famous logo being crumpled repeatedly in a variety of ways, including by hand, a recycling plant press and vacuums, all in the name of urging people to “Recycle Me”.
Outdoor Lions
Magnum “Stairs”, “Corner” and “Doorstep” by Lola MullenLowe
Magnum’s outdoor work depicted moments of people finding rays of sunlight in the winter. It created digital billboards that directed people towards sunny spots in the city, as well as nearby stores selling discounted ice creams.
.jpg)
Pedigree “Adoptable’ by Colenso BBDO
Pet food company Pedigree matched potential new owners to rescue dogs by upgrading canine photos to studio-quality shots and featuring them in outdoor ads that direct people to an adoption site.
Social and Influencer Lion
CeraVe “Michael CeraVe” by Ogilvy PR New York
Skincare brand CeraVe sparked rumours using four influencers, social and PR partners that celebrity namesake Michael Cera had developed the product, then used its Super Bowl film, starring Michael Cera, to dispel them.
Titanium Lion
Doordash “DoorDash All the Ads” by Wieden & Kennedy Portland
To prove that it could deliver more than just food, DoorDash promised to deliver a product from every ad aired during the Super Bowl to one lucky viewer. Leading up to the event, every time a brand announced their ad, Doordash added the product to their prize. They placed their ad in the fourth quarter of the event to “intercept every brand conversation” as the ads were released.
