FCB wins two Grand Prix and Nike takes another at Cannes Lions Day 3
The Reach category awards at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity were handed out on the third day of the event (19 June), and FCB took home two of the coveted Grand Prix Lions, while Nike earned yet another.
The Whopper Detour wins a Grand Prix Lions at Cannes
FCB New York took center stage for the Burger King ‘Whopper Detour’ campaign, taking the Grand Prix Direct, Retail Lion. The campaign was a hit amid Burger King’s push to promote new order-ahead features of its redesigned mobile app by selling Whopper sandwiches “at” McDonald’s for only a penny, for a limited time. The app geo-fenced McDonald’s restaurants so that the Whopper Detour promotion only unlocked when users were physically within 600 feet of Burger King’s biggest competitor.
FCB/SIX was honored with its very first Grand Prix for ‘Go Back to Africa,’ on behalf of Black & Abroad, in the Creative Data, Social Data & Insight category. The campaign takes the racist and derogatory phrase, “Go back to Africa,” and gives it a new, positive spin for a pan-African tourism campaign that celebrates the continent’s beauty and diversity. The campaign also garnered a Bronze and Silver Lion.
AKQA’s Graffiti Stores retail initiative, for Nike, won the Grand Prix Media Lion. The retail-cultural crossover was produced by AKQA’s São Paulo studio to launch a suite of Nike Air Max trainers, and has been awarded for the Social Behaviour and Cultural Insight category, which recognises initiatives that draw inspiration from specific audiences and communities.
The project transformed São Paulo’s streets into Nike stores. Nike’s Air Max trainers have historically been part of urban culture all over the world, and so Nike partnered with the Brazilian street-art collective InstaGraffiti, to put the trainers on the feet of those that most represent São Paulo’s street culture: the city’s graffiti characters.
AKQA Executive Creative Director Diego Machado said in a statement: “We always seek new ways to connect people with brands. This project shows how we can apply creativity to hack the accepted system. Nike as a brand is part of AKQA’s soul, and this partnership dates back to before AKQA São Paulo even existed, which gives this Grand Prix a special meaning for us. We are thankful to the Nike Brazil team for them supporting the idea with the same defiant spirit that defines the iconic Air Max.”
Forsman & Bodenfors took the Grand Prix in Creative Strategy for its ‘EVA Initiative’ campaign for Volvo. To improve gender equality in all cars, 40 years of research was shared with the world, which found an equality issue in the auto industry. Women are 47% more likely to be seriously injured, 71% more likely to be moderately injured and 17% more likely to die in a car crash – because most crash test dummies are based on the average male.
As part of the initiative, a print ad was created for Volvo Car Sweden that reveals your chances in a car crash by measuring the size of the hand. Since most crash test dummies are based on the average male, the hand inside the ad is based on those same measurements. So, if your hand doesn’t fit, you may be more likely to get injured in a car crash.
The Female Company was awarded the PR Grand Prix for ‘The Tampon Book: a book against tax discrimination,” by Scholz & Friends Berlin.
In Germany many luxury goods are taxed with the reduced rate of only 7% while tampons and other female sanitary products attract the top value added tax rate of 19%. The team packaged tampons in a book and, thus, sold them with the lower tax rate, essentially outsmarting the law through the law. The Tampon Book also contains 45 pages with bold illustrations and empowering stories about menstruation and feminism and promotes a petition that urges the German parliament to discuss the abolition of the tampon tax.
Even without media money or planning, Scholz & Friends was able to reach feminist influencers to reach mass media in order to spread the key message: “Sign our petition to get rid of the tampon tax”. More than half of the feminist influencers the team contacted decided to share the call to action for free.
On the Social & Influencer front, Wendy’s grabbed the Grand Prix Lions for its ‘Keeping Fortnite Fresh’ campaign, by VMLY&R Kansas City, and its innovative use of community.
To reach an audience within the Fortnite game Food Fight the brand entered the world of Fortnite as a player, a co-creator of culture, a gamer and an entertainer. Rather than pay to play, the brand decided to just play.
The campaign blurred the line between brand and influencer, playing Fortnite as Wendy’s and streaming it live on Twitch to immerse itself in this audience’s world as both player and brand. It saw the effort as an organic way to insert Wendy’s into the game’s story and meet its audience in its world. In this game mode, proponents of the Fortnite universe’s two restaurants – Durr Burger and Pizza Pit – could represent Team Burger or Team Pizza in battle. The team discovered that Durr Burger stored its virtual beef in freezers, a move directly against the fresh, never frozen beef for which Wendy’s is known.
The game’s objective is to eliminate other players and be the last person standing. Wendy’s decided to enter the fight on the side of Team Pizza, making its objective to eliminate all burger freezers from the game.