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Creativity speaks for itself at Cannes

KHONDOKER Md SHOYEB, back from Cannes, France
CANNES. More often than not, people associate the city in the French Riviera with the world's oldest, prestigious and the most influential of film festivals, the Cannes International Film Festival. But the city, every year, not long after the film festival ends, flocks in another bunch of artistic minds for the Cannes Lion International Festival of Creativity.
A group of cinema screen advertising contractors, on seeing the film festival, wanted something similar for the advertising world, and in 1954, was born the International Advertising Film Festival, in Venice, Italy. The trophy handed out was in the shape of a lion, inspired by the lion of the Piazza San Marco, the principal public square of Venice.
From 1984 the festival was held at Cannes and hence its current name. This year, the festival took place from lune 17-23, and saw a congregation of the world's brightest advertising professionals, designers, digital innovators and marketers to debate, learn and be inspired. And be bestowed with the greatest industry honours, be celebrated for pushing creative communications forward, along the way.
But the festival, this year, was made more special by the presence of the former US President Bill Clinton, who delivered a keynote speech on the penultimate day of the festival.
“We need people like you to fire our imaginations, to fill our brains with the facts that will overcome an inherent resistance to change. As communicators, you can have a profound effect on the next 30 years,” said Clinton, who came as a guest of Brazilian communica-
tions company Grupo ABC.
He called out to the ad world to form "diverse networks of creative co-operation that will capture the world's imagination. There is wisdom in diversity as long as your ultimate goal is to come up with an answer”.
The prizes handed out are in a total of 15 categories, with the honours varying between grand prix (the highest), gold, silver and bronze. As many as 34,301 entries from 87 countries were submitted and Bangladesh, too, was among them.
Bangladesh Brand Forum (BBF) took a team to Cannes to participate in the 'Young Lions Competition', where advertising professionals of up to 28 years of age working in teams of two are given 24-48 hours time to come up with a winning campaign on either of: print, cyber, film or media. The Bangladeshi team took part in the print category, but unfortunately the team from Singapore bagged the gold medal.
India participated in the festival in a big way this year, with a total of 1,182 entries were sent out by 81 Indian agencies, at a cost of nearly 3.4 crore rupees. Awards they won, and present they were in the jury boards, of all but the Mobile Lions category.
Mumbai Mirror's ad campaign titled “I am Mumbai" bagged the Film Craft Gold Lions award. The film presents a series of stories featured in the paper with a notion that for some time now, one voice every morning has been amplifying some of the sounds a city does not get to hear, but should.
Another gold award was won by India, in the Outdoor Lions category, for campaigns pertaining to Western Union. The ad demonstrated the strength of Western Union in transferring money of Indians abroad to their folks in India via interactive images of Abraham Lincoln, Queen Elizabeth II and Gandhi on a billboard, which shows the change from dollar or pound to rupee.
Indian Ministry of Tourism's campaign, the Hinglish Project, to help tourists read Hindi easily, bagged the gold award in the Design Lions category. A font was invented for the campaign where it became possible to tell the phonetic sound of any Hindi character while looking at the corresponding English word.
The Grand Prix award of this category, though, went to the German advertising agency Serviceplan Munich, for the campaign it ran for Austria Solar. The campaign shows the texts and graphics of Austria Solar’s annual report spring to life when it comes under sun's ray, but become invisible when taken off it.
United Colours of Benetton's “Unhate" campaign, conceptualised by Italy’s Fabrico Treviso, featuring world leaders who are at loggerheads Palestine and Israel; USA and Venezuela; Germany and France — kissing one another, won the Press Grand Prix award.
The Radio Grand Prix was taken home by Talent Sao Paulo for its “Repellent Radio" a campaign for Go Out-
side Magazine. The work saw a high frequency broadcast essentially turn a radio into a mosquito repellent.
Sports giant Nike was a big winner with its campaign for its new product Nike+ Fuelband. The product is a sleek, simple wristband that allows its wearers to track the calories they burn, not just through their workouts but with any physical activity they do during the day. The campaign which shows that everything you do counts, won the prestigious Cyber Lions Grand Prix and Titanium and Integrated Grand Prix. The campaign, the jury felt, took a product that was initially aimed for runners and made it into a mass product.
The Outdoor Lions Grand Prix went to the “Invisible Drive” campaign for Mercedes Benz, which was described by Lo Sheung Yan (Mayan), the jury board president for the category, as "truly innovative".
According to Daimler: "We made people experience F-Cell the same way the environment does, like it's not even existent. In practice: We disguised the B-Class F-Cell with mats out of LEDs on the one side and fixed a camera on the other side of the car."
"The camera filmed everything that happened behind the vehicle and transferred every action directly to the
LED mats." As a result, the B-Class became invisible for the passers-by in the immediate vicinity.
Reinvention of Coca-Cola’s classic “Hilltop” commercial leveraging the reach of Google, scooped the Mobile Lions Grand Prix award. While American Express picked up two Grand Prix awards, in Promo & Activation and Direct categories, for its campaign “Small Business Gets an Official Day”, by Crispin Porter + Bogusky Boulder, USA.
PR Lions Grand Prix was won for Puerto Rican bank Banco Popular De Puerto Rico's campaign “The most popular song”. Playing to the salsa hit “No HagoMasNa,” which translates to “I Do Nothing”, the campaign shows the day in the life of a lazy man, who can afford to be thanks to his bank which looked after his finances well. At a time when banks are particularly disliked, the campaign increased the bank's image and reputation index to a record 80 percent.
Along with the four award ceremonies, many seminars, workshops and social events were held, for the purpose of networking and exchange of ideas.
shoyeb@thedailystar.net