Top ads' mix of new, old, reflect an industry in transition
on USA TODAY
by Theresa Howard, June 23, 2006
CANNES, France — The range of advertising winning awards this week at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival reflects an industry in flux.
The competition wraps up Saturday with the Film Lions for the world's best commercials and Titanium award for innovation. As with winners in the eight other categories, the top contenders in Film run the gamut from simple to complex, single-media to multiplatform, high-tech to old tech — sometimes in the same campaign.
VIDEO: Guinness ad
"There are a lot of trends and counter-trends coming together at the same time," says John Osborn, chief executive of BBDO, N.Y. But, "As the world becomes more multidimensional, the things that stand are the simplest concepts."
Ads competing for Grand Prix and gold, silver or bronze Lions have mixed old and new.
Much attention has gone to the latest, flashiest online work — while the medium most disparaged as a dinosaur has been TV. Yet the industry elite at this "Olympics of advertising" are eagerly awaiting the winners from 4,860 Film entries.
The top contenders on the Film short list are all out of London: an ad for Guinness by AMV/BBDO, one for Sony Bravia by Fallon London and one for the Honda Civic by Wieden + Kennedy, London.
And they all are high-impact commercials built on simple, clever ideas. Only the Guinness ad features even a hint of digital production tricks. In the ad, three men sip Guinness at a bar, then time flashes back until it gets to the era when animals first emerged onto land. The message: Good things come to those who wait.
In the Honda ad, a live choir of 60 performs a carefully orchestrated piece that mimics the sounds of driving a Civic, including the engine, windows, wind, rain and tires.
The ad for Sony's new Bravia LCD TVs features 250,000 colorful balls bouncing down steep San Francisco streets. (And all those balls are the real thing, not digital.) The message: color like no other.
VIDEO: See the Sony ad.
These are classic TV — though in keeping with the times, each also has a Web presence, with the ad and features such as footage of the making of the ad also available online and posted on video-sharing sites such as youtube.com.
"Ads are starting to move across so many mediums," says Matt Freeman, CEO of digital agency, Tribal DDB. "The lines are blurring and the categories seem arbitrary."
Other trends spotted this week:
by Theresa Howard, June 23, 2006
CANNES, France — The range of advertising winning awards this week at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival reflects an industry in flux.The competition wraps up Saturday with the Film Lions for the world's best commercials and Titanium award for innovation. As with winners in the eight other categories, the top contenders in Film run the gamut from simple to complex, single-media to multiplatform, high-tech to old tech — sometimes in the same campaign.
VIDEO: Guinness ad
"There are a lot of trends and counter-trends coming together at the same time," says John Osborn, chief executive of BBDO, N.Y. But, "As the world becomes more multidimensional, the things that stand are the simplest concepts."
Ads competing for Grand Prix and gold, silver or bronze Lions have mixed old and new.
Much attention has gone to the latest, flashiest online work — while the medium most disparaged as a dinosaur has been TV. Yet the industry elite at this "Olympics of advertising" are eagerly awaiting the winners from 4,860 Film entries.
The top contenders on the Film short list are all out of London: an ad for Guinness by AMV/BBDO, one for Sony Bravia by Fallon London and one for the Honda Civic by Wieden + Kennedy, London.
And they all are high-impact commercials built on simple, clever ideas. Only the Guinness ad features even a hint of digital production tricks. In the ad, three men sip Guinness at a bar, then time flashes back until it gets to the era when animals first emerged onto land. The message: Good things come to those who wait.
In the Honda ad, a live choir of 60 performs a carefully orchestrated piece that mimics the sounds of driving a Civic, including the engine, windows, wind, rain and tires.
The ad for Sony's new Bravia LCD TVs features 250,000 colorful balls bouncing down steep San Francisco streets. (And all those balls are the real thing, not digital.) The message: color like no other.
VIDEO: See the Sony ad.
These are classic TV — though in keeping with the times, each also has a Web presence, with the ad and features such as footage of the making of the ad also available online and posted on video-sharing sites such as youtube.com.
"Ads are starting to move across so many mediums," says Matt Freeman, CEO of digital agency, Tribal DDB. "The lines are blurring and the categories seem arbitrary."
Other trends spotted this week:
- Big and fake ideas. In a time when marketers and advertisers say that authenticity matters, fakery was rewarded.
De Tijd won a Grand Prix in direct selling for a mail campaign featuring fake application letters from elderly job applicant "Cyriel."
The multipronged campaign for men's body spray Lynx was built on the creation of a fake airline: The campaign won Lions in several categories and the TV commercial is on the short list for Film awards.
Agency Droga5 won a Grand Prix and two Lions for a digital effort for Ecko men's clothing using a fake video that purported to show graffiti being sprayed on Air Force One. - Interactivity. Online and off, consumer interactivity was a major theme in the entry field.
OMD UK and Hasbro won a gold Lion for a promotion for a 70th anniversary Monopoly game. Consumers who wanted to join the game online could pick one of the special GPS-equipped cabs and get the equivalent of about $30 million in play money. When a cab picked up or dropped off at a property, you paid if you didn't own it or got paid if you did.
In New Zealand, agency TBWA/Whybin created a billboard with a giant Adidas soccer ball attached with bungee cords and a huge action shot of England soccer player Steven Gerrard looking like he was about to kick it. Consumers who bought a real Adidas ball got to be strapped into the giant ball and fired into the air — reaching 106 mph in two seconds. An in-ball camera recorded the experience on a keepsake DVD. - Simplicity. Some of the top print ad winners were simple images. An ad for Levi's Slim, by JWT India Mumbai, showed stick figures with the red Levi's tag on their legs. And Saatchi & Saatchi, N.Y., won gold for simple, hand-drawn faces, bottles and other props in ads for 42Below vodka.
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