Since the 2024 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity wrapped on June 21st, we obviously had to scroll through all of the incredibly talented submissions. Just in case you don’t know, Cannes Lions is THE advertising and communications industry event that celebrates the world’s most innovative companies, insights from iconic thought leaders, and inspiration from every corner of the creative marketing community.
If you’re as invested as us in the festival, you can find all of the Cannes Lions submissions on the Winners and Shortlists webpage. But if you don’t have access, or don’t want to look through thousands of submissions… below are our top five favourite submissions, why we LOVE them, and what makes them special.
1) The Misheard Version
- Campaign: The World’s First Mass Hearing Test
- Award: Grand Prix Cannes Lions
- Advertiser: Specsavers, Golin
People avoid hearing tests for up to 10 years because hearing loss terrifies them. To start a new, less scary conversation about hearing loss, Golin and Specsavers turned one of the most famously misheard songs into a hearing test people couldn’t ignore.
Re-recording Rick Astley’s "Never Gonna Give You Up" with famously misheard lyrics and releasing it to ‘Rick-Roll’ the nation. The work started a national conversation on hearing loss – the song was played 20 million times in 8 hours, the story made news in 95% of the UK’s major titles and Specsavers saw hearing test bookings rise a record 1220% above target.
2) 1943 by Innocean Berlin
- Campaign: Capa vs. War
- Award: Bronze Cannes Lions
- Advertiser: Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center, Innocean Berlin
“Capa vs. War” was born from the observation that images captured in the first half of the 20th century by war photographer and photojournalist, Robert Capa, could be mistaken as photos of ongoing armed conflicts.
By curating a selection that showcases this visual ambiguity, Innocean Berlin and the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center created a print and out-of-home campaign that utilized pictures and headlines to question and provoke a comparison between our present, which faces an unprecedented rise in the number of wars, and mankind’s violent past of global-scale conflicts. With this correlation, they crafted a message that voices a demand for today’s peace through the work of one of history’s greatest photographers.
3) Michael CeraVe
- Campaign: Michael CeraVe
- Award: Gold Cannes Lion
- Advertiser: CeraVe, Ogilvy PR
Michael CeraVe" was a first-of-its-kind immersive campaign that invited everyone to participate in a memorable prank-like experience, only to be debunked on America’s biggest stage – the Super Bowl – by CeraVe’s dermatologists. The three-week campaign took people on a journey from “CeraVe, developed by Michael Cera” to “CeraVe, developed with dermatologists.”
The intricately developed integrated campaign was executed across earned, paid and owned channels, including social media and influencers. In the days leading up to the Big Game, Cera went toe-to-toe with dermatologists and revealed his own “Michael CeraVe” commercial to ‘prove’ that he was the master behind CeraVe. The truth came out during the Super Bowl-aired TV commercial, with Cera’s claims debunked by a boardroom of CeraVe dermatologists.
4) 855-HOW-TO-QUIT (OPIOIDS)
- Campaign: 855-HOW-TO-QUIT (OPIOIDS)
- Award: Gold Cannes Lions
- Advertiser: Anzen Health, Serviceplan
855-HOW-TO-QUIT-(OPIOIDS) is an innovative approach to help those struggling with opioids. It’s a helpline that turns the object of addiction into a way out, reaching people in their most critical moment – when they have a pill in their hand.
The helpline uses the familiar opioid pill codes as phone extensions, connecting the caller with a person who managed to quit that very same pill, sharing their experiences and advice on how to quit. The initiative launched as a nationwide campaign on location and context-specific OOH media, film, and social.
5) The First Edible Mascot
- Campaign: The Edible Mascot
- Award: Grand Prix Cannes Lion
- Advertiser: Kellanova: Pop-Tarts, Weber Shandwick
Pop-Tarts has a history of putting a Crazy Good spin on classic flavours and the brand wanted to bring that approach to college football in the first-ever Pop-Tarts Bowl. The challenge Weber Shandwick was presented with stood as follows: “Pop-Tarts is a beloved brand that consumers see as a breakfast staple. We were tasked with putting the brand at the centre of a broader snacking conversation.”
The solution they created was to bring all the “ingredients” that make the brand iconic into the college football world. Weber put food and flavour at the centre of the entire Pop-Tarts Bowl experience, highlighting the brand’s place at the table well beyond morning hours.
Want to hear more? Reach out to Katie Falk, at katie.falk@zgm.ca.