Tor Myhren, Cannes delegate
Sunday, June 22, 2008 - Not that it matters, but here's my brief Cannes summary.
The Gorilla:
I love this ad. Though many people bitched about this taking home the big prize, I was quite pleased to see it win, for one simple reason: It is the only ad this year that I e-mailed to any of my friends outside of the industry. Pure, unadulterated entertainment. And great PR and recall for the brand. Sure, if you think about it too much, and analyze the shit out of it, you can talk yourself out of it. But the public doesn’t scrutinize ads like the industry does. They either like it, or they don’t. They either pass it on virally, or they don’t. It either works, or it doesn’t. This ad worked on every level. I’m glad the judges went with their hearts instead of their heads on this one. Good choice.
Film/Titanium:
Film and Titanium were inspirational, largely due to HBO’s Voyeur and Xbox Halo 3. These are large-scale, totally integrated executions, and watching them really made you feel like the industry has made the turn. We may not go the way of the music industry after all. Though I don’t particularly enjoy watching the Halo stuff, it’s just really, really smart and hit at every single touch point for gamers. To see that campaign in its entirety is pretty damn impressive. The same can be said for HBO, though clearly on a smaller scale.
A couple awesome suprises:
There were also two amazing pieces that I’ve never seen before, and
either one could have won it all in my opinion. One was the Uniqlock
piece out of Japan, which is insane and became a true cultural
phenomenon. I still don’t know if I fully understand it. My wife is
from Tokyo, and I’m not sure she fully understands it. But I do know
that we both visited it online, in all its iterations, and spent about
two fascinating hours with the thing (which is more time than I’ve
spent with any ad in years.) Not only that, but for the entire two
hours I was subtly subjected to Uniqlo’s clothes. In a way, it seems
like this whole project did what Droga’s “Honeyshed” had hoped to do.
And this is not to bust on Droga’s brave attempt at a new way of
shopping, only to say that Uniqlock drove interest, interaction,
consumer content and buzz value, and ended up being a truly brave, new
way to entice young people to hang out with the brand, and of course
shop at Uniqlo.
The second ad I loved that I had never seen was the Nomis Football
boots music video/TV spot. This thing grew on me to the point where I
went from not really liking it 30 seconds in, to thinking it was the
best TV spot in the show a minute later. Just very unique storytelling
and oddly original execution.
Print:
Writing is dead.
Ninety percent of the print ads in Cannes had no words. Or at best,
they had a short line to explain the visual. It’s an international
festival, and design, like music, is a universal language. But I must
say I miss a well-written ad on those walls.
Which may explain my favorite print ad of the bunch. It won gold in
the public awareness category, and was for AADHAR in India. No photos
or Photoshop, just words. Its headline read, “How to carry on the
family name.” Then seven points followed, each more blunt and
brilliantly delivered than the next. I’ll summarize.
1. Insert a drug called luminaria into the vagina of a 21-week pregnant woman.
4. Insert a pair of scissors into the fetus’s skull.
6. A spoon shaped spatula will be used to scrape out the collapsed skull.
7. After three months, try again to have a boy.
The point is, there are over 1 million abortions in India each year
because the baby is a girl. This was a shocking, amazing piece of
communication. Genius in its use of simple language and perfectly
chosen words.
In print I also really dug the Canadian Club stuff with the tagline
“Damn right your dad drank it.” These seemed fresh and honest, not in
the kind of forced way many ads try to be fresh and honest.
Outdoor:
Outdoor seemed a bit ridiculous, with so many winners being obvious
pet agency projects where they went around and stapled up a couple
posters, stuck stickers on car windows, or did some stunt in front of a
dozen people on a backstreet. However, it’s tough to argue with the
original execution from Leo and McDonald’s, where they actually planted
lettuce in soil on a sun drenched billboard, and waited many weeks as
the lettuce grew fresh and green to promote McD’s salads. Pretty sweet.
The social scene:
The only thing I’ll say about the social scene at Cannes is that
there is a new trend, which includes advertising men getting naked at
parties. Buck naked, and just dancing. Or in one case, grilling
burgers. Or in another, climbing trees. The scene was as gratuitous as
ever. I highly recommend St. Paul as a fantastic daytrip for anyone
going next year.
—Tor Myhren is chief creative officer at Grey New York and a Cannes delegate.
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