Celebrating this year’s winners at Cannes, Motivate Media Group and Motivate Val Morgan, official UAE representatives of the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, hosted an awards ceremony on September 12.
As part of the awards ceremony, Motivate Group’s Managing Partner and Group Editor-in-Chief, Ian Fairservice and Motivate Val Morgan’s Chief Operating Officer, Avinash Udeshi presented the Lions to the winning UAE agencies.
This year’s Cannes Lions marked significant milestones for the region. Impact BBDO’s chief creative officer Ali Rez was appointed as the first-ever Jury President from the MENA region.
The UAE also boasted the largest contingent of jurors to preside over a single festival, which consisted of 18 jury members in total.
This year’s edition also saw almost double the entries submitted, rising from 358 last year to 640 this year across 22 UAE agencies. Of the total entries, 81 were shortlisted and 21 were awarded Lions including 1 Grand Prix, 1 Gold, 6 Silver and 13 Bronze.
The UAE also won awards for the first time in the categories of Glass: The Lion for Change, Entertainment for Music and Creative Data.
The award ceremony was attended by Havas Middle East, Saatchi & Saatchi, Leo Burnett, FP7 McCann and Impact BBDO.
And Us collected its Lions, 1 Silver in Health and Wellness and 2 Bronze in Design. Havas Middle East collected its Bronze Lion, awarded for the PR category.
Publicis Groupe’s Saatchi & Saatchi took a double Bronze in Health & Wellness and Creative Commerce while its sister agency, Leo Burnett, took a double silver for Creative Commerce and Creative Strategy.
FP7 McCann received the largest number of Lions, 2 Silvers for Creative Data and Outdoor and 7 Bronze in the categories, Brand Experience & Activation, Direct, Entertainment for Music, Industry Craft, Media, Outdoor and Radio.
Impact BBDO was awarded 1 Grand Prix for Print & Publishing, 1 Gold for Glass: The Lion for Change) and 1 Bronze for Creative Strategy.
Impact BBDO also received its trophy for the MENA Network of the Year for the fifth year in a row.
Also present at the event was And Us’s Jonathan Cruz, part of the Young Lions Digital Competition UAE team with Saymon Medeiros, and Chloe Salloum from American University in Dubai who represented UAE at the Roger Hatchuel Academy student programme.
The evening featured a round of networking over refreshments and featured speeches from Ali Rez, Jonathan Cruz and Chloe Salloum, followed by the presentation of the awards to the winners.
Rez, in his speech on being picked as the first-ever MENA Jury President, said, “This is the opportunity for us to keep this going. Hopefully, Cannes keeps picking jury presidents from here. Not one, maybe two next year, maybe three the following year. But that will only happen if we get more of these [lions] home.”
