Cannes Lions Winners Of 2019 (2 From India!!!)

It is that time of the year again when more than 11,000 delegates from over 90 countries gather to celebrate the best of creativity in brand communication, discuss industry issues and network with one another. The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity (formerly the International Advertising Festival) is a global event for those working in creative communications, advertising and related fields. Advertising and creative communications industry considers this to be the largest gathering.

Each year these winners inspire us with their super-creative ideas. Here are some of the winners and their ideas that we loved from Cannes Lions Festival 2019.

Less than half of India’s children from 6-14 ages go to school. To improve the numbers, FCB Ulka created ‘The Open Door Project’ for The Millennium School. The way this works is, regular kids finish their classes by 2 PM every day. Post that, this private school opens its doors for the underprivileged kids in its surroundings and gives them free education. Within a couple of months launching the campaign, The Open Door Project gathered participants from almost 55 schools across the country. An earned media spend of nearly 11 Million Rupees. And most importantly, underprivileged children receiving quality education and a chance to better their lives.

‘Project Free Period’ is a campaign with a very unique concept video. A survey shows that sex workers get their days off from work only when they are in their periods.

Keeping this in mind DDB Mudra created a campaign video for Stayfree which showed prostitutes expressing their views on periods. The campaign also showed people from Stayfree and Prerna (NGO) teaching the prostitutes taking their days off due to periods, some skills to earn a living from. This video indeed highlighted two taboos of the Indian society Periods and Prostitution.

Project Free Period has fuelled unprecedented conversations with reach soaring at 2.2 billion and counting. Global and international media networks have accelerated our momentum. Project Free Period as of today, has a network of over 11,200 students across the country. These students have helped transform over 100,000 period days into days of skilling.

This one’s our favourite pick from 2019 Cannes Lions winners. ‘The Whopper Detour’ is a super-creative campaign started by the famous food chain ‘Burger King’. In this campaign ‘Burger King’ turned their biggest competitor McDonalds’ restaurants into touchpoints of their campaign. They invited every consumer within 600 feet distance from any McDonalds to order a 1-cent Whopper through the new Burger King App. FCB New York created the video for this campaign by Burger King.

This campaign yielded an ROI of 37:1. Besides that this campaign also brought an overall 33% increase in mobile customer base and also brought a $15 million increase in projected sales for the following year.

Proctor and Gamble created the ‘First Shave’ video campaign. P&G sells widely famous products like Gillette, Ariel & Oral-B. Grey Canada created the video for this campaign. In January, Gillette had launched a campaign ‘We Believe’ where they showcase 4 transgender men having their first shaving experience and sharing their stories, along with their families.

Gillette was falling behind as a brand unable to cope up with its new age competitors. But this campaign went viral and it catapulted Gillette from a brand no one was paying attention to, to the #7 most meaningful brands of 2019.

When it comes to common luxuries like gaming or partying, differently abled people are always marginalized. So Microsoft created an adaptive Xbox controller for differently abled person to enjoy video games just like anyone else could. This video showed real differently-abled gamers using the Xbox adaptive controller and competing in mainstream games.

The campaign received extensive press coverage over the days with over 635 placements. Social reach was unprecedented for Microsoft, garnering support from gamers, fans, and celebrities. The Xbox Adaptive Controller leveled the playing field for 33 million gamers with disabilities. McCann created this video for Microsoft.

For the 30th Anniversary of “Just Do it,” Weiden+Kennedy created a campaign for Nike which was led by Colin Kaepernick, the controversial NFL quarterback who knelt during the national anthem to protest police brutality, at the risk of being fired by his team. Millions including celebrities praised the campaign for being on “the right side of history”.

The “Dream Crazy” campaign celebrates inspirational athletes that have pushed their sports forward. The campaign immediately ignited debate across the country and throughout the world. The campaign saw Nike’s stock price rise to an all-time high and created $6 billion in brand value, making it the most successful campaign in the brand’s history.

We as advertisers know that animals sell things. They appear in 20% of all global advertisements. Over $118 billion is spent on advertisements that feature animals every year. While animals are thriving in advertising, they’re suffering in the real world. 60% of the animal population has been wiped out since 1970. The Lion’s share is an initiative that encourages brands and organizations using images of animals in their marketing to donate 0.5% of their media spend to the Lions Share trust. With the help of the United Nations Development Programme, the money is then dispersed across the world, to save species from extinction, preserve wildlife habitats and look after animal welfare. This campaign video was made by Clemenger BBDO Melbourne for Mars Inc.

These were some of the winners and their ideas from 2019 Cannes Lions that we found astonishing and meaningful.

We at Panorbit, ourselves being a techno-creative digital agency, would like to make such out of the box and effective marketing strategies for you. Check us out at Panorbit.