Zenith Australia CEO Nickie Scriven says Uber Eats "needed to do more" when it came to its Australian Open Ambush campaign entry at this year's Cannes Lions.
Speaking at a panel event hosted by Zenith, Scriven discussed multiple successful campaigns from her time on the media jury at the annual festival of creativity but took time to focus on the issues surrounding Uber's submission for the integrated media category.
The Australian Open ambush was created in partnership with Channel Nine, Special Group and MediaCom as part of Nine first year broadcasting the tennis tournament.
Despite the success of the work, which integrated Australian Open competitors into Uber Eats ads to make it look as though they took place in real-time, Scriven says it needed to take its reach further.
"They didn't take it beyond TV and they didn't have to do much. Of course, that would have been expensive to create but they didn't have to do much to amplify the work around social," Scriven says.
"It could've been memes around the 'Tonight I'll be Eating' tagline and that would have taken off or some out of home work to remind people when driving home from work."
Despite her opinion on what the campaign missed, Scriven says "she fought" to keep the work at the top of the list throughout the judging process, praising the concept, execution and "effective use of media placement".
While the campaign did pick up a Silver Lion at the event, Scriven says it should have gone further but lacked "real integration" across other channels, which is where opposing campaigns found greater success.
She added that when agencies and clients are putting up campaigns for integrated media, they have to be thinking beyond the original piece of creative.
"If they had hit a few of those elements, they would have won Gold and people loved the content. But it's our role as a media agency to effectively plan what the role of each channel is to bring that content to life and that's the piece that was missing," Scriven says.
Going a step further Scriven says had the campaign been executed in line with the charter the media jurors had created to judge entries, the Australian Open campaign could have even scored a Grand Prix.
According to their charter, the jurors had to see a true integration of media, and a demonstration of how each channel comes together to bring the content to life.
She added that it was a real "missed opportunity" which also impacted the campaign's chances to win Lions in the other media categories it was nominated in.
Special Group won six awards, two Silver and four Bronze, for the Uber Eats Australian Open Ambush campaign.
Australia has ranked fifth globally at the 2019 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, scoring 36 Lions overall.
Despite ranking higher than last year, Australia won fewer awards than in previous years. The final count was one Grand Prix, two Gold Lions, 13 Silver Lions and 20 Bronze Lions.
In 2018 the nation placed sixth with 56 Lions, including four Grand Prix, compared to 2017 when Australia won 113 Lions.
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