Each year, the Cannes Lion International Festival of Creativity brings together thousands of people from nearly 100 countries working in creative communications, entertainment, design and tech to find out where the industry is heading and celebrate the power of creativity as a force for business, for change and for good.
As part of the Festival, winners are chosen in a variety of advertising and public relations categories. The big winner this year was a commercial for State Street Global Advisers featuring Fearless Girl.
The ad was created by McCann New York and produced by Craft Worldwide New York, Stuart Weissman Productions New York, and Copilot Strategic Music + Sound New York.
The commercial won four Cannes Grand Prix awards, the highest honor given at the Festival.
You may be familiar with Fearless Girl, but like me perhaps did not know that she had a name.
Here is the award-winning commercial:
It’s also the first time I’ve seen the commercial, and it is not only artistically beautiful, but carries an important message as well; a perfect combo.
As you might imagine, there were several other good commercials and ads at Cannes Lion. Here is the complete list of the Grand Prix winners in each category:
One thing I noticed is that I did not see any Christmas or Super Bowl commercials in the list of award winners. I’m not sure if that is by design, or just that the judges were not impressed with the most recent batch of those commercials.
As you may know, I’m a big fan of Christmas commercials, and none of the 2016 commercials really resonated with me like the classic Monty the Penguin did from 2014:
I’m already looking forward to what John Lewis and adam&eveDDB will do this year…
Borden's Blather 