Ada Unity Paper campaign gets shortlisted again at 60th Cannes Lions 2013

•  Leo Burnett’s Michael reports from 60th Cannes Lions

The second day at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, as the day commences at the world’s largest advertising festival we deliberate on the day’s excitement. Yesterday we set out our strategy for the week or as we would call it the big decision-making day for our week ahead.

We decided on which speakers we would like to see and which parties we were going to attend and yesterday was all about the speakers. And yes did I mention Sri Lanka won its second Cannes Lion for its idea, the Unity Paper by Ada newspaper, which is part of the Wijeya Group, the metal won was in the Media Lions Category and was initiated by Starcom. Three cheers for Sri Lanka for being recognised on a global stage.

Throughout the day we had quite a few interesting seminars and workshops. First up was Yahoo speaking about ‘the new world of online content appealing to the habits of today’s consumer’. We saw the amazing Jack Black who has started a content company that specialises in comedy and is tied up with Yahoo. He started the company in virgin  territory, Black went on to say, and that there are no rules because you can have a one episode show that is ten minutes long or a multiple episode season with content every day. It entirely depends on the producers’ speed and if the viewers like what is in front of them. Currently Black’s team have tied up with Yahoo and there is a pending series called ‘Ghost Ghirls’.

The seminar which followed was by Coca-Cola Vice President, Global Advertising Strategy and Content Excellence Jonathan Mildenhall which was a show-stopper and very insightful. The company has put creativity at the forefront of its marketing agenda for 127 years and has built one of the world’s most compelling stable of global brands. Coke drew on its rich heritage of work which demonstrated the company’s global commitment to legacy content, shining a spotlight on how its belief in cultural leadership shapes how it’s creatively driving marketing plans for the future. We were also able to see some outstanding work by the company. One of which is the ‘Small World Machines’ campaign, conceptualised by Leo Burnett Chicago and Leo Burnett Sydney linking strangers from two nations divided by more than just borders, which saw itself win a Gold Lion on the first awards night. The campaign received thunderous applause following a viewing of its video at the Grand Audi which was definitely a moment to remember for the company and the Leo Burnett network.

For the 60th Cannes Lions, the team introduced online viewing of one seminar a day for the public, each seminar was decided following an online vote and the most popular seminar each day is to be screened. The seminars begin at 4.30 pm local time and you can visit www.canneslions.com and watch a LinkedIn seminar on ‘the next big challenge: creativity in social media’.

The big seminar for day one which was streamed live was by Mindshare and McLaren F1 on ‘how to be more adaptive and why it’ll make you more creative’. We along with the rest of the world got to see Jenson Button and listen to a very interesting session. What Ayrton Senna, Mika Häkkinen and Lewis Hamilton to name a few, all had in common was that they were all World Champions. However more importantly, they all had a team behind them that worked as one to get the car over the line ahead of the competition. In this session we learnt how to be more adaptive and got to see how this could boost creativity. F1 is the embodiment of adaptive behaviour with different skills coming together, interpreting, augmenting and creatively iterating to succeed in a changing environment. We learnt how the principles of adaptive behaviour can be applied to our own industry and experience. Whether you are ‘dunking in the dark’ or simply optimising a global campaign on a local level, the ability to collaborate to be creative in strategy, execution and implementation and to continually adapt based on new data, is now essential for agencies. A quote by Bruce McLaren, from his book “From the cockpit” in 1964 stayed with us: “To do something well is so worthwhile that to die trying to do it better cannot be foolhardy”.  

Tomorrow we also see the Young Lions teams get their brief. We saw the young teams from the Sri Lankan agencies; JWT and Phoenix Ogilvy get ready to face the competition. We are all wishing them the best of luck. It is always great to see a Sri Lankan presence here at Cannes. Again our shortlist yesterday made it to the big wins today, happiness for us as the Ada Unity newspaper will bring home the second Bronze Cannes Lion in the Media Lions Category for Sri Lanka, for the work done for Ada to address and unity in our country which has gone through a 30-year conflict.  News just in is that we have again been shortlisted for Advertising Typography in the Design Lion Category for the Ada Unity paper, another hurrah for Sri Lanka. It was very interesting to see some work coming out of the countries we have never heard about as creative greats, I am happy we can proudly say that Sri Lanka now falls into that category.

Then there was the first award ceremony in the evening. It was all very exciting, no matter how many award ceremonies one has been to, the anticipation and excitement of them is undeniable. Australia took the biggest haul at the first round of the Cannes 2013 awarding taking away a total of 23, including two Grand Prix Lions (PR, Direct) and four Golds for the endearing ‘Dumb Ways to Die’ campaign by McCann Melbourne. The Grand Prix for Promo and Activation went to Ogilvy Brazil for Sport Club Recife ‘Immortal Fans’.

Eraj, Indu and I will be updating you all with our experiences at Cannes each day including the announcements of the finalists and winners. Tomorrow there will be more finalists announced along with another great evening.