15 top campaigns from Cannes Lions 2018
By James Herring on Monday, June 25, 2018
There were over 32,372 awards entries submitted for Cannes Lions this year – and because you’re busy people we’ve sifted through the submissions to bring you some of our favourite campaigns.
#1 The Most German Supermarket
In 2017, the right-wing party AfD stood a good chance of gaining seats in the German parliament.
So supermarket chain EDEKA decided to make a stand for diversity and banned more than 20,000 foreign products from its shelves.
It then opened a supermarket wth only German-made products – the bare shelves saying more than words ever could.
#2 Bodyform “Blood normal”
Periods are a natural part of life, so why are they rarely given any screen time?
Hiding something so normal only adds to the shame and embarrassment many women feel when it comes to their periods.
The #bloodnormal campaign aims to call time on period taboos – the first UK ad to depict actual menstrual blood as opposed to the usual TV-friendly blue liquid.
#3 Diesel: Deisel
Italian fashion brand Diesel has launched a fake goods store in New York – selling unwitting customers a limited edition range of hoodies and jeans – ahead of Fashion week.
Canal Street, famous for knock-off goods provided the perfect location for the authentic knock-off store in which Sweatshirts and T-shirts are stamped “Deisel”.
#4 KFC ‘FCK’ for KFC
KFC this year schooled us all on how to handle crisis comms as they managed to turn a rather serious case of chicken shortage into an opportunity to drive even bigger levels of love for the plucky brand (no pun intended).
From the now infamous “FCK” print ad to genuinely funny social updates they managed not only to apologise with minimal repercussion but come out on top with three sought after Lions.
#5 ‘JFK Unsilenced’ by The Times
President John F. Kennedy never got a chance to deliver his 1963 speech at the Dallas Trade Mart, where he hoped to address America’s role in the world.
This campaign used AI technology to recreate the speech
#6 Lacoste: Save Our Species
Lacoste announced that their iconic crocodile logo would be temporarily stepping down from his spot on the brand’s signature polo shirts to be replaced with 10 different and very special critters.
#7 Price on our Lives for March for our Lives – Parkland Students
2018 has sadly seen a series of horrific school shootings in America.
The March for our Lives movement, focussed on reforming gun control laws, created a damming public campaign against Senator Marco Rubio who had reportedly received money from the NRA.
Taking that publicised figure they divided it by the number of the students enrolled in the state of Florida to give a “price tag” showing how much each student’s life was worth.
This price of $1.05 was then worn during the March 24th demonstrations.
#8 Eureka: Coco Austin
Model Coco Austin caused a stir when she strolled down the busy NYC streets while her assistant vacuumed the pavement in front of her.
Fans freaked over the shocking video as it went viral! 33 Million video views later and everyone was talking about Eureka vacuums.
#9 #SheDrives for Nissan Saudi Arabia
This year has seen a number of the historic leaps seen in women’s rights in Saudia Arabia, most notably the ability for women to hold driver licenses.
In direct response Nissan ran the #shedrives campaign to help women practise driving with assistance from close male relatives as their driving instructors.
#10 CALM
Suicide prevention charity CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably), sparked discussion with eighty-four sculptures of men with hoods covering their faces on top of the ITV South Bank Studios to raise awareness of male suicide.
The sculptures, named ‘Project 84’, represent the eighty-four men who take their own lives in the UK every week.
#11 Turning Beer into Water for Anheuser-Busch
Following a series of devastating natural disasters across the USA, leaving millions without sanitary drinking water, the makers of Budweiser beer repurposed an entire brewery to help with relief efforts.
Halting the production of their famous product they instead devoted the brewery’s production capabilities to the purification and distribution of clean water for all of the affected areas.
#12 Trash Isles for Plastic Oceans/LADbible
Lad Bible and environmental charity Plastic Oceans teamed up their year for a mammoth project.
Their aim, to establish a mass of rubbish, the size of France, drifting in the ocean as an official country – The Trash Isles.
By awarding the floating rubbish conglomerate with country status it would then be subjected to UN environmental laws.
Thus becoming the world’s legal duty to act and clean it up.
#13 The Human Catalogue by IKEA
To launch their 2018 catalogue, IKEA challenged Yanjaa, two-time world memory champion, to memorize the 400 plus items in their new 328 page book – thus becoming the world’s first human catalogue.
Taking to a live feed on social media, she was then put to the test to prove her mettle by taking questions from the public.
#14 Friendly Photography Ban by Ferienregion Bergün Filisur
The small Swiss village of Bergun caused a media storm after news broke that it was banning all photography of its scenic beauty.
The official reason given was to avoid depressing people who were confronted with the picturesque nature of the village through friend’s snaps online.
Obviously the tongue in cheek ban was lifted after a couple of days with the mayor issuing a “friendly special permit” for all visitors who brought along their cameras along with an open invitation to anyone who may have been “affected” by seeing the photos online to visit Bergun and see its wonders for themselves.
#15 Faroe Islands Translate
The Faroe Islands started their own online translation service in a bid to have their native, Faroese, featured on Google Translate.
The Faroe Islands Translate service was set up by the Visit Faroes tourism organisation, which – instead of providing instant machine translation – passes your request onto a volunteer, who then provides a live or pre-recorded video translation.
Even Prime Minister and former footballer Aksel Vilhelmsson Johannesen helped out, offering a welcome to visitors in Faroese.
Bonus one….
A Danish brewery, Norrebro Bryghus, brought out out a new beer called ‘Pisner’, which has been made with the help of 50,000 litres of urine that was collected from the Roskilde Festival. While ‘Pisner’ contains no actual human waste, the novelty beer has been produced from malted barley that was fertilised with the urine collected from Roskilde.
They then crowd-sourced everything from the name to the bottle design.
