The deadline for entries to the Locus Awards is closing on Monday 1 September. So, in a bid to drum up even more entries, we asked what made the winning Outdoor campaigns at Cannes so impressive? Luke Chess, creative director of MJW, runs the rule.
I’ve been asked to critique the Cannes Outdoor Lion winners for 2014. Which begs the questions, can one person’s opinion (in this case, mine) be any more valid than a roomful of advertising’s biggest and brightest?
Heck, I’m going to say “Yes it can” – committee thinking can be just as dodgy and prevalent at Cannes as anywhere, as the hoo-hah around the Harvey Nichols Grand Prix in Film amply demonstrates.
So here goes.
GayTMs (Whybin\TBWA Melbourne), for ANZ (Grand Prix)
You can “I wish I’d had this brief” all you like, but the fact is when an agency gets this kind of brief we so often drop the ball at some point. But not Whybins Melbourne. Lovely piece of creativity meets utility, all the more impressive for the number of hoops it must have had to jump through at the banking end. A worthy winner.
End Marmite Neglect (Adam&EveDDB London)
Amazing subtlety that quite frankly may work in the UK market but I’d suggest wouldn’t fly here in Australia (where we like our work a bit blunter). Arguably relies on familiarity with the overall campaign, which creative juries have in spades … but do UK consumers? 10/10 for bravery. Perhaps a few points less for effectiveness—but that’s not what a Cannes Lion in Outdoor is asked to measure.
Roosevelt, Aldrin, Snoopy, ET, Washington, King Kong for Trivial Pursuit, Hasbro (DDB Paris)
Wow, Hasbro France appears to have an enormous advertising budget for a product that’s 35 years old! But the work does a lovely job of reminding me how much I like to play a game that makes me feel clever some of the time and rather dull at others.
Renovated billboards – pink house, white house, yellow house, for OBI (Jung Von Matt Hamburg)
Another example of utility … of sorts. I really like the product demonstration – it’s smart and powerful. But at the end of the day, what am I to do with a renovation that’s only the size of a 24 sheet poster? Though of course, if the whole façade were renovated, the impact of the piece would actually be reduced. A conundrum, this one!
Un, Deux, Trois, Quatre, Cinq, for Guinness (BBDO Proximity Singapore)
Clean, simple, beautiful. Yes, it’s “old school” advertising, but the promise is clear – Guinness in a bottle that’s just like on tap. Yum.
Cityscape, for WWD Japan, Infas Publications (Hakuhodo Japan)
I have to declare an interest here, as Hakuhodo are the valued and exceedingly awesome network of which my agency, MJW, is a part. But what I will say is that as a piece of outdoor advertising, I preferred the Hakuhodo piece that won in PR – Rice Code, for Inakadate. Why it didn’t win gold in outdoor I am not sure. Perhaps it wasn’t entered?
Christmas lunch, Gravel, Wire wool, Sink plug, Toothbrush, for Harvey Nichols (Adam&EveDDB London)
And lastly, the campaign I alluded to in my intro. While I found the TV component of this campaign uninspiring and flat, I think this outdoor is bang-on. A brave and clever product idea (that is really much more about generating PR and word of mouth) represented elegantly and without adornment in the outdoor space. Top marks for the campaign idea, and top marks again for the restraint shown in outdoor. I like, a lot.
The closing data for the Locus Awards is Monday 1 September, so there's still time to get your entries in. Download the entry kit from the Locus Awards section of the website.
Posterscope is the major sponsor of the event.
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