Australian advertisers among top awards at Cannes Lions

From generative AI to social-first campaigns, the Cannes Lions ad industry awards were awash with Australian creative talent last week. The Growth Agenda reports on some of the award-winning campaigns.

A still from The Monkeys' metaverse created for the Tuvalu: First Digital Nation campaign

Australian advertising and marketing industry leaders returning home after a week in the summer heat of the French Riviera for the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity — the global ad industry awards gathering — are bringing with them a multitude of awards emblematic of the forces driving creativity and commerce in 2023, from the metaverse to generative AI and purpose-driven campaigns.

Metaverse mavericks

Australian-born creativity was front-and-centre as the event concluded on Friday, with a campaign for the government of the Pacific Island of Tuvalu from The Monkeys, part of Accenture Song, awarded one of the most coveted awards — a Titanium Lions Grand Prix.

The work, titled Tuvalu: The First Digital Nation, featured the island’s minister for justice, communication and foreign affairs, Simon Kofe, delivering a speech to the UN Climate Change Conference (COP27) from a metaverse — a digital version of the island created to preserve its heritage and future, as rising sea levels threaten its existence.

The metaverse speech pointed to a bleak and dystopian future that, without action, would become a reality. In the video, Mr Kofe said: “As our land disappears, we have no choice but to become the world’s first digital nation.”

The project focuses on the locale of Tuvalu, but has global resonance. Mr Kofe continued with a message about the impact of climate change and call-to-action for the world at large. “Without a global conscience and a global commitment to our shared wellbeing, we may soon find the rest of the world joining us online as their lands disappear.

“It has long been the time for action, but we have not stepped up to the challenge. We must start doing so today. Otherwise, within a lifetime, Tuvalu will only exist here,” he said in the speech.

Tara Ford, chief creative officer, The Monkeys said “I think this piece of work says everything about the power of creativity”.

“Creativity can find solutions to the world’s biggest problems and a way through a heartbreaking situation. It can apply the humanity to technology and bring something with heart. I think it’s always had that power.”

Age of generative AI

Conversations at Cannes this year were dominated by generative AI. Its potential was on full display, with some award-winning Australian work already showing effective applications.

Ad agency Howatson+Company collected an award for a campaign titled Exhibit A-i for Maurice Blackburn Lawyers.

The project came after the law firm had spent 300 hours gathering witness testimonies that detailed the harrowing experiences of asylum seekers detained on Manus Island, Nauru and Christmas Island, as part of a class action it was bringing against the Australian government to close the detention centres.

AI-generated images were created for Maurice Blackburn Lawyers as part of a campaign by Howatson+Company

The brief to the agency was to translate 32 written testimonies into visual images. In the absence of access (journalists and cameras are banned on Nauru and Manus Island), the creative agency used generative AI to create visuals of the written documented experiences. Their team then took the AI-generated images and spent around 50 hours validating the images with some of the same refugees who gave statements.

Chris Howatson, chief executive of Howatson+Company, said: “You don’t want to have a technology and then try to find a client to apply it to. You want to have a problem that’s best solved from technology. And that’s what this was. The thing to really understand about this case study is that there is no photographic evidence of what offshore detention centres look like.” That’s where generative AI was able to make a difference, he said.

“It’s not an advertising dramatisation of what the conditions were like, it is an accurate representation, as close as we can get to a photograph.”

Another use of AI came from another award-winner last week; ad agency AKQA’s Australia, Sao Paulo and Portland teams for Nike. The campaign marked Serena Williams’ 27th and final year as a professional athlete. Titled Never Done Evolving, it used AI to analyse archival footage of Williams’ tennis matches between 1999 and 2017 and then generated a gameplay of Serena versus Serena. It reached more than 1.69 million of Nike’s subscribers via a YouTube livestream.

Managing partner of AKQA, APAC, Brian Vella said: “It’s an important proof point of what’s possible when you combine creativity with emerging technology. The project is remarkable, though also stands as an entree to the AI revolution.”

Indigenous talent

Campaigns for social change and impact were also among the Australian creative talent recognised.

The Australian team from another agency, R/GA, was recognised for its work with Indigenous social enterprise We Are Warriors, in which Nooky, the renowned Yuin rapper, producer and radio host released a music single, Through The Fire, which also became a short documentary-style film.

“We are warriors,” Nooky said in the video. “It’s a movement, it’s a platform with, you know, the aim to highlight Indigenous excellence and greatness to our youth and also empower them to achieve their greatness.”

Ben Miles, VP, executive creative director of brand design and consulting, APAC, R/GA, said: “Passionate people come together to create change. Seeing Nooky on stage at Cannes reinforces the warrior spirit for future generations to come.

“For We Are Warriors to be recognised and played on here is absolutely huge and continues to stoke the fire of what’s possible when passionate people come together to create change.”

Social-first creativity

Samsung Australia’s agency CHEP Network took to social media to reach Gen Z audiences as part of a campaign for the foldable smartphone Z Flip4, hiding images of the phone in YouTube ads, where audiences could participate in a virtual hunt to win a device. It asked audiences to “trick” Google with a search term that offered clues as to where to find the ad with the phone. Samantha Almedia, president of the social and influencer Lion awards, said Samsung’s Flipvertising campaign “broke taboos about the things we think are possible to do with ads”. This social-first campaign, which collected the top Grand Prix award in the social and influencer category, fostered audience engagement by design, calling on Gen Z audiences to actively participate in the campaign.

Gavin McLeod, chief creative officer, CHEP Network, said: “When it comes to social and influencer led campaigns, it’s important to do more than simply broadcast a message to your audience, and you need to go beyond just engaging them. What Flipvertising did brilliantly was it encouraged our Gen Z audience to participate in a way that was true to them.”

The chicken or the egg?

Honest Egg Co., a family-owned and operated egg farm based in Daylesford, Victoria, asked its ad agency, VLMY&R, to create a campaign that highlighted the company’s regenerative farming practices. Each week. Honest Egg Co. moves its chicken laying sheds to new pastures, providing them with plenty of room to move and food to keep them healthy.

Creative ad agency VLMY&R's campaign for Honest Egg Co. won gold Lion in Cannes, France last week

To demonstrate (and communicate) the health of its chickens, a pedometer called Fitchix was created and worn by Honest Egg Co.’s hens, which then tracked their step count.

That number, which could often reach the tens of thousands, was then printed on the egg shells from each individual chicken, designed to give visibility about the health of its chickens to the consumer purchasing the product. The campaign has collected three awards, including a Gold Lion in the outdoor category.

Roger Boyd, general manager at Honest Eggs Co., told The Growth Agenda, “As a company on a mission to bring honesty and transparency back to egg farming, this campaign demonstrates how regenerative farming is better for the eggs, the land, the farmer and the community.

“It’s a testament to the power of purpose driven storytelling, and the impact we can make when we combine creativity with a regenerative mindset. We’ve built a strong brand with purpose and this idea is just getting started.”

VMLY&R APAC’s chief creative officer Paul Nagy added: “One of the purest and most joyful ideas I’ve ever had the privilege to be involved with – I hope every egg in the future has the chicken’s happy lifestyle printed on the shell.”

Unlikely collaborators

In addition to top Australian creativity on display, a global campaign also used creativity as a force for good. Publicis Groupe’s newly appointed chief creative officer for the ANZ market, David Bowman, said he observed some “unlikely collaborators” between creative firms at this year’s gathering. That example came in the form of a campaign titled Working with Cancer for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in the US, which was launched at Davos earlier this year. It won this year’s Lions Health Grand Prix for Good. The campaign was initiated by Publicis Groupe’s global chief executive and chairman, Arthur Sadoun, who publicly shared his personal battle with cancer in 2022, and then launched the campaign to reduce the stigma of cancer in the workplace. Six hundred businesses have since pledged their support, impacting more than 20 million employees around the world.

At Cannes, major holding companies including Edelman, IPG, Omnicom and WPP announced they will join Publicis to take the campaign forward, calling on creatives around the world to put forward a creative idea that will run on World Cancer Day 2024 in a global multimedia campaign supported by $100m.