While not the best of years, Australia ranks #7 at Cannes Festival of Creativity; NZ makes top 12
It wasn’t exactly the brilliant performance of 2013 – when OZ was ranked #2 – but after number-crunching the final award tally for Cannes 2015 across 19 categories, CB can reveal that Australia is ranked #7 country in the world with a total of 46 Lions, behind first placed USA (291 Lions), UK (128), Brazil (91), France (82), Germany (72) and Spain (48).
New Zealand was ranked #12 with 20 Lions, behind Canada (35 Lions), Japan (32), Argentina (25) and Sweden (24).
With 46 Lions Australia was ranked #1 within the Asia-Pacific region followed by Japan (32 Lions), New Zealand (20), China (16), Singapore (15), India (13), South Korea (10), Thailand (9), Malaysia (6), Indonesia (4), Pakistan (3) and Hong Kong (2).
The star performer for Australia was M&C Saatchi, Sydney’s Optus ‘Clever Buoy’ campaign, which picked up four Gold Lions, two Silver, one Bronze and a coveted Titanium Lion.
Another favourite of the judges was the Cancer Council NSW ‘I touch myself project’ via J Walter Thompson, Sydney, which picked up two Gold Lions, a Silver and three Bronze.
Saatchi & Saatchi, Sydney also contributed to the Aussie total, winning a Gold Lion and an Innovation Lion for it’s OPSM ‘Penny the Pirate’ campaign. Leo Burnett, Sydney won a Gold Lion at the inaugural Creative Data Lions for Australia Bureau of Statistics ‘Run That Town’. GPY&R Melbourne was awarded a Gold Lion for Defence Force Recruiting ‘Messages from the front line’.
22 Comments
So I have invented a time machine. It uses the wifi signals from Telstra and the gamma rays from the sun to make it work. I have a prototype and it looks awesome. In theory it should work and I know it will enable us to travel back in time to right the wrongs and forward in time to warn people of what happened in the past. It’s kind of like the clever bouy idea – all theory and not a real working operating model in the public domain. So like clever bouy I trust I will win everything with my theoretical idea. How is Cannes credible when something is won for something not even in operation in the real world? Pathetic and lost my vote. M&C Shafty at its best. That is all. Keep bullshiting boys and thw awards will keep coming.
The fact that all of the campaigns singled out here were for ‘social good’ campaigns speaks volumes about what is wrong with Cannes and Australian agencies.
We shouldn’t be aiming for the new Clever Buoy, but rather the new I Will What I Want.
Big campaigns that make a real difference to big clients.
everyone is having a dig that this Clever Buoy isn’t advertising and that it wasn’t ‘seen’ by the audience, that it ‘didn’t make a real different to big clients’
They may not have paid for media, but they sure as hell earned a lot of it.
For all those people that say the news item, they (theoretically) should have a more positive view of optus and that might impact their purchasing decisions – that’s the aim of the game non?
Interested to hear arguments against
Cheers
@Yeah But, It’s pretty simple, really.
Our job is to help clients sell shit.
It’s not to get Facebook likes. It’s not to get column inches in a newspaper. It’s not to win awards given to us by people who do the same job as us.
The above things are all worthless, if they don’t help the client sell shit.
How many phones, data plans etc has Clever Buoy helped Optus sell?
Of course, there’s no accurate way of measuring that, and we enter the age-old debate of how advertising effectiveness is measured and the influence it has on consumers.
But one thing is for sure. If fuck-all people who actually buy Optus products saw it or remember it, it had fuck-all effect.
Sure, we can piss in each other’s pocket at the wonder of it all, and how clever it was (which it is), but I would still draw your attention to my second sentence, above.
Am loving the constant hate for Clever Buoy on here.
Was it a clever idea and an alternate approach to talking about a mobile network brand, in my eyes yes.
Did M&C write an award submission that was reviewed and deemed award worthy by a jury of our peers (who presumably aren’t stupid), again yes.
Have M&C ever claimed anywhere that it was a fully working and operational product, rather something that was an R&D project and in development, not that i have read (it was in fact launched at the Google Beach last year at Cannes, and so if they were so keen to enter it as a theoretical thing, why wouldnt they have done to then?)
Personally i think that it is sad that the industry in Australia (yep, that’s all of us on this blog) have such a tough time thinking differently and crediting a good creative idea with the plaudits that our international colleagues don’t seem to struggle with awarding it with.
So maybe next year we should all make some TV ads for our clients and enter those into Cannes and see how we go.
Personally i would rather us be brave, think differently and having a go at actually using the smarts within our industry to solve a problem, and maybe be doing so actually doing something that might make a difference in the real world and not the tiny little bubble that is the industry and pays our pay cheques.
So if our job is to help clients sell shit are you saying that we shouldn’t be helping clients to build their brands.?
Cannes is a competition of ‘cleverness’ for ‘creative’ people and like most award shows it is a business and it is a bloody good one at that. Perhaps Cannes should win one of its’ own awards.
The role of advertising is to sell clients products – how that is executed is largely irrelevant. The real question is did the application of creativity sell product? If not then let’s just be honest and have lots of Cannes runners-up and Cannes participation certificates.
Perhaps the real role of Cannes is the exchange of ideas, exposure to great conversations and displays of ‘creative cleverness’.
It doesn’t take long to unpick the relevance and credibility of many winners. Let’s at least be honest to ourselves.
It’s like a meeting on the top of Everest. It doesn’t matter whether you climbed alone without oxygen or paid a Sherpa to carry your pack. If you’re there just enjoy the moment and the view….deep down you know you weren’t the first or the best.
@richie
‘Our job is to help clients sell shit.’
Amen to that. But…
….positive brand perception is one of the best ways to do this and this campaign helps increase the positive perception of the Optus brand.
Not sure how you can ague against that to be honest
That’s why you’ll find Clever Buoy didn’t win big medal at D&AD, because after all D&AD is still about true advertising, which is what we do. Less Bam Kapow, flashy stuff and more brilliantly communicated ideas for a brand.
No one is dissing Australia, I think though as a community in the industry we need to be honest with ourselves. If someone made a TV ad or an app as a prototype, is it right to award it? How different is that to a print ad not legitimately running? And we all know those have been awarded.
This is a really well communicated idea for a brand though?
@Yeah But,
Not sure how it increases positive brand perception until it’s out there, working and has proven itself. As I’ve said, despite the case study, ask someone in the street if they know or remember anything about it.
If they don’t, it’s doing nothing for the brand.
Not sure how you can argue against that.
Hi Richie
No one is arguing our job is to sell things, but assuming the only way to sell mobile phone plans is to talk about mobile phone plans is tyrannically stupid.
I feel sorry for the people you work with.
Scam wins titanium.
Cannes jumps the shark.
@richie
It is out there though. It’s got nearly half a million view on YouTube already and was plastered across a heap of mainstream media.
Sure, if people dont know if then it won’t work, but part of ‘helping our clients sell shit’ is helping them know about it in the first place.
I don’t believe I ever said “the only way to sell mobile phone plans is to talk about mobile phone plans”.
I suggest you re-read my comment.
Buoy wins titanium
Cannes jumps the shark
@ Nuff Sed
Hey, you knicked my line about why you should enter the Kinsale Sharks instead of Cannes…
Sharks jump Cannes.
The truth of it is, Australia’s performance was dismal.
Our so called powerhouses won nothing of note.
Our TV is garbage. And our traditional integrated strength had been neutered because of out lack of digital expertise.
Perhaps, worst of all, the message is clear that advertising in Australia is just run by bean counters. These awards are just the lies we tell ourselves to obscure the reality that the majority who view this blog work in nothing more than large accounting firms, who instead of fiddling with numbers, fiddle with pictures and words…
Oh shut the fuck up you whinging bastards.M&C won and if you didn’t try harder next year.
He makes sense: http://www.campaignbrief.com/2015/07/ant-keogh-on-cannes-scam-the-j.html
And what the fuck have you done to change that? In your agency, production company or garphic-design-photocopying-services business?
Think about this for a second. If you are one person in a company of 100, you are responsible for 1% of that companies culture. If you can affect positive change, no matter who you are, you might be responsible for 30% of that companies culture. If you can smile at people, maybe 50% of your companies culture.
Now look at Australia’s weaknesses according to your perception of that. If you’re slightly positive minded, you might have been able to contribute to a 5% lift in our performance. If you’re super-human, maybe a 50% lift.
But you’re not. You expect everything on a plate and whinge when the results aren’t there.
Buck up or shut the fuck up.