David Lubars on this year's top winners

By Eleftheria Parpis

David Lubars, chairman and chief creative officer of BBDO North America, served as president of the Film Lions jury this year. In this video, he talks about BBDO's Network of the Year award, the selection of Philips' "Carousel" for the Film Grand Prix, the groundbreaking nature of the Obama for America campaign, and how advertising has evolved in the past several years.

June 29, 2009 | Comments (5)

Yes, We Cannes: a week of celebration and hope for an industry that will never be the same again

By Eleftheria Parpis

Cannes does not do recession well. The sun-drenched French Riviera, grand hotels along the Croissette and yachts bobbing in the harbor provided an incongruous backdrop for last week's gathering of an industry battered by a brutal year. Attendance was down 40 percent. Award entries were down 20 percent. Still, hope springs eternal in ad land, as executives expressed faith that the worst is over and celebrated work they hoped would show the way forward, including an inspirational presidential campaign and a scrappy effort for a small tourism account that became a global phenomenon.
  Talk of the recession gave way to what Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Procter & Gamble CMO Marc Pritchard called a "reset." The message: The boom years are finished, expectations for growth need a new baseline, and the industry needs to rethink its traditional practices. The spirit of renewal was best captured by the selection of Barack Obama's presidential campaign for both the Titanium and the Integrated Grand Prix. In large part, the effort won because it was able to ignite a groundswell among voters formerly blasé to politics. In the words of Titanium Jury chair David Droga, chairman of Droga5, the campaign "created a movement that was more than advertising."
  The other big winner, CumminsNitro's "Best Job in the World" campaign for Tourism Queensland, advertising an island caretaker job on the Great Barrier Reef, won an unprecedented three Grand Prix (in Direct, PR and Cyber) by taking a tiny budget of $1.2 million and building a global phenomenon, spread virally online. "It's the conversations they generate that's important," said Lars Bastholm, chief digital creative officer at Ogilvy and Cyber Jury chair.

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June 29, 2009 | Comments (2)

Obama wins Titanium & Integrated Grand Prix; Tribal DDB tops Film with Philips 'Carousel'

By Eleftheria Parpis

CANNES, FRANCE -- The marketing campaign that took Barack Obama, a little-known African American senator with only two years of experience in Washington, to the U.S. presidency was honored with the two top prizes—the Titanium Grand Prix and the Integrated Grand Prix—at the International Advertising Festival in Cannes on Saturday. The effort was created by a multi-agency team, including AKPD and GMMB.
  In the Film competition, a digital agency, Tribal DDB in Amsterdam, won the Grand Prix for its epic "Carousel" spot for Philips (below). The ad, directed by Adam Berg of Stink Digital and promoting the Philips Cinema 21:9 LCD TV, depicts an elaborate robbery gone wrong, frozen in time throughout one continuous tracking shot, and includes interactive touch points where viewers can access additional content. 

  Film jury president David Lubars, chairman and chief creative officer of BBDO North America, said the Philips spot is not only a "brilliant piece of content" but also "shows the way forward" as a film that works across multiple screens and offers interactive elements with additional content.
  The Titanium and Integrated jury came to a unanimous decision that the Obama campaign deserved the top honors in both contests, said jury president David Droga, creative chairman of Droga5, because it was a ground-breaking political campaign that engaged the public and featured an idea that was "made better" with its use of different media. "It created a movement that was more than advertising," said Droga. "From the strategy to how they used different media, it was a very compelling moment in marketing."
  The campaign, Droga added, broke the mold of political advertising, embraced technology and created a template that was up to the public to fill in. "It felt like it was created by the people," he said. "The general public got consumed by it and added a different element to it. Incredibly inspired grassroots movement."

AFTER THE JUMP: Other winners in the categories.

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June 27, 2009 | Comments (8)

Fred Raillard on winning the Press Grand Prix

By Eleftheria Parpis

Fred & Farid's Wrangler campaign "We Are Animals," a sexy series that depicts human as animals in the wild, stirred some controversy by taking the top prize in Press this year at Cannes. In this video, Fred Raillard explains why he was surprised that the risky campaign struck a chord with the Cannes Press jury and the strategy behind the repositioning of the American brand for a European audience.

June 27, 2009 | Comments (3)

Q&A with P&G's Marc Pritchard

By Eleftheria Parpis

Procter & Gamble global marketing officer Marc Pritchard discusses his first trip to the Cannes festival, what creative awards mean to the world's largest marketer, the achievements of P&G's brand agency leader model, and how the industry is pushing the reset button in a time of recession.

June 27, 2009 | Comments (2)

The Who's Roger Daltrey on music and branding

By Eleftheria Parpis

Rock legend Roger Daltrey, the 65-year-old singer of the Who, joined promoter Harvey Goldsmith for a panel at Cannes on Thursday, sponsored by Young & Rubicam, in which they reminisced about their careers and spoke about how the Who built its mega-brand. "Very early on in our career, we realized the only way we would get noticed was daring to be different," Daltrey said. The singer talked about the making of the rock opera and musical Tommy and why The Who Sell Out is one of his favorite albums. Watch the seminar here. In the video above, he talks with Adweek at the Majestic hotel about music and branding, his influences, the secret to his longevity, which Who song he'd like to see in a commercial and what he's doing next.

June 26, 2009 | Comments (0)

Spike Lee on user-generated content

By Eleftheria Parpis

Spike Lee is here in Cannes to talk about user-generated content and his participation in the MOFILM competition. Twelve brands participated in the contest, including AT&T, Best Buy, Doritos, Nokia, Philips and Hewlett-Packard. They each posted briefs on the MOFILM Web site, and invited people from all over the world to upload their films and compete for awards and prizes. Each brand chose its favorite film, and the entries went on to compete for the grand prize—$12,000 in cash and the chance to be on set with Lee on his next project. Hiroki Ono, a 23-year-old from Yokohama, Japan, won the competition with a film for Nokia (posted below) about a long-distance couple who connect through a sunrise, a sunset and their cell phones. Lee was joined on a panel Friday by Nick Smith, group managing director at Accenture Marketing Sciences, and Anne Mukherjee, group vp of marketing at Frito-Lay, who has spearheaded Doritos' UGC initiatives. The discussion, titled "Laudable or Laughable," centered on the value and impact of user-generated content. In the video above, Lee, who has his own Brooklyn-based ad agency SpikeDDB, spoke with Adweek about UGC and why corporate America needs to wake up.

June 26, 2009 | Comments (1)

Google CEO: The worst is over

By Brian Morrissey

The drumbeat of bad news doesn't seem to let up, but count Eric Schmidt in the optimist camp. During a Q&A here at Cannes with Publicis Groupe CEO Maurice Levy and at a press conference afterward, the Google CEO said he believed the worst was over, and that the U.S. economy should begin to grow again in the fall.
  The recession has not left Google untouched. Its business has slowed, Schmidt said, because while consumers continue to use search, they are more selective about their purchases and tend to spend less when they do open their wallets. That, in turn, depresses the amount advertisers bid in Google's auction system, he said. But Schmidt does not believe the economic crisis has shaken U.S. consumers' proclivity to spend money by going into debt. "Americans love their credit cards," he said. "If people are concerned Americans will stop spending, you do not understand the American psyche."
  Google has seen a decrease in search in categories like mortgages and an increase in searches for things like bankruptcy services. That's evidence, Schmidt said, that the Internet is working as it should. But it is not part of a long-term trend of consumer retrenchment, he added. "It's shocked me that Americans started to save," he said. "My guess is that's a temporary phenomenon."

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June 26, 2009 | Comments (1)

Eric Schmidt on Microsoft's Bing

"I have used Bing. We benefit from Microsoft's continual re-entry into this market. We encourage them to continue this strategy."

June 26, 2009 | Comments (0)

Marketing execs hit the reset button

By Brian Morrissey

The lingering economic downturn is a forbidding cloud hanging over Cannes. Few conversations occur without touching on what's been a dreadful year for most in the advertising business. Even in an industry that lives on optimism, many see tough times stretching ahead. They got little succor from the analysis of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Asked yesterday about an economic recovery, he instead spoke of a "reset." His point: Forget about growing from the previous level, there's a new base to build from. The boom days are over.
  The same reset theme came up during Friday's "Great Cannes Debate" panel, in which WPP CEO Martin Sorrell quizzed top marketing executives. The good news: All of the panelists said marketing and advertising are more important than ever to their organizations. That doesn't mean the procurement office won't squeeze agencies on price, though, according to Brian Perkins, corporate vp at Johnson & Johnson. "I think procurement has a very important role to play in how we conduct our business," he said.
  Marc Pritchard, global marketing officer at Procter & Gamble, called the recession "the reset button." It allows companies, he said, to "recalibrate and rethink and innovate. Our opportunity is to step back and say what is it about our brand that is a promise and how can it be brought to life in innovative way." When P&G, the world's largest advertiser, asked consumers what they were seeking, it came back to value. That means P&G has to look hard at its marketing, not just cutting it but examining media allocation and measuring impact better.

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June 26, 2009 | Comments (0)