The campaign that drove Barack Obama to victory in
the US presidential election has claimed two top awards at the Cannes Lions
International Advertising Awards.
The campaign, submitted by Obama for America, has been hailed as
a masterful combination of new media, door-to-door and community grass roots
campaigning with a clever tactical use of traditional TV advertising.
The campaign won two grands prix in the Titanium and
Integrated Lions categories.
To win the Titanium grand prix, a campaign must
involve a breakthrough idea that is “provocative, challenges assumptions and
points to a new direction”.
“Titanium celebrates work that causes the industry to
stop in its tracks and reconsider the way forward,” according to the rules set
out by the Cannes organisers.
The integrated prize is awarded to a campaign using
three or more media – such as TV, press and the internet - that is “high
standard and state-of-the-art”.
Earlier in the week, Obama’s campaign manager, David
Plouffe, gave a seminar about how the different facets of media were used to
deliver the campaign.
The Great Schlep, the campaign featuring Sarah
Silverman designed to increase Obama’s Jewish support, won a Titanium Lion for
agency Droga5.
The campaign to boost sales of the Zimbabwean, a newspaper
that attacked Robert Mugabe’s regime by using the troubled country’s almost
worthless bank notes to make billboard adverts, was awarded a Gold Lion in the
Titanium and Integrated Lions category. The campaign, created by the South
African agency TBWA/Hunt/Lascaris Johannesburg, previously won the grand prix
in the outdoor advertising category.
The US presidential campaign also featured in the
awards in the Film Lion category.
Charles Stone III, the creator of Budweiser’s famous “Wassup”
TV ads from 2000, was given the unique award of a special jury commendation.
Stone produced a 2008 version, through Los
Angeles-based Believe Media, to galvanise support for Obama’s presidential bid.
The ad features the formerly happy-go-lucky
characters in dire circumstances, such as being posted to Iraq and the stock
market crash, since we last saw them in 2000.
Under the rules of entry the ad is not eligible for
consideration for an official award as only work that has been commissioned by
a commercial client can be judged. However, the jury felt that the work could
not go unheralded at Cannes.
“It was an extraordinary piece of work, as a
standalone political statement it is perhaps second to none,” said Bil Bungay,
judge and co-founder of UK ad agency Beattie McGuinness Bungay. “It completely
captures eight years under president Bush. But we have rules that every work
has to be commissioned [by a client] but we felt it was so significant it
needed special mention”.
In a year of significantly less buzz and expectation
around the traditionally high profile battle for the film grand prix one of the
UK’s big hopes, ad agency MCBD’s epic “history of Britain” TV ad for Hovis
could only manage a bronze lion.
T-Mobile’s “dance” TV ad, featuring a flash mob dance
in Liverpool Street station, netted a Gold Lion for Saatchi & Saatchi.
Mother London also managed a Gold Lion for its series of internet ads for
Stella Artois featuring spoof trailers for US films and TV shows, shot in the
style of French Nouvelle Vague directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and Francois
Truffaut.
The UK also scored gold with agency Golley Slater’s
campaign for the army highlighting road traffic accidents among servicemen.
Perhaps the biggest surprise, from a UK point of
view, was the jury’s decision not to even shortlist Fallon London’s latest
bizarre TV spot for Cadbury, “Eyebrows”. Last year Fallon was the joint Film
Lion grand prix winner for “Gorilla”.
This year’s grand prix winner in the film category
was the electronics firm Philips for an extended clip taken in one shot of a
bank robbery frozen in time. The ad, by Tribal DDB in Amsterdam, is
interactive, with viewers able to pause the shot at any point and open up
sub-films on different parts of the robbery in progress. The ad, called
Carousel, promoted the Philips Cinema 21:9 TV.
This year’s film lions category saw a 25.4% decrease
in entries, from 4,626 to 3,453 year on year, with UK agencies submitting 32.5%
fewer entries – down from 381 in 2008 to 257 this year.
But Dave Lubars, the president of the film Lions
jury, said there were no issues with the overall quality of film work
submitted.
“Entries are down this year but there is the same
amount of brilliant work as any other year,” he said. “[Although] this year
weaker work was not taken a shot on [by agencies]. There was the same brilliant
few hundred things [submitted] this year.”
However, his fellow juror Steve Back, executive
creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi in Australia, said that he had seen
a lot of “crap” in the run up to finalising the winners.
“In the initial stages I was a little scared [that]
under the current economic crisis there was still a lot of crap coming in,” he
said. “However, by Wednesday a number of options emerged for the grand prix.”
