Cannes Grand Prix, baby!
Hi all.
Media Arts Lab has won the 2015 Cannes Grand Prix for ‘Outdoor’.
Here are my peeps going up to collect the heaviest of Lions:
If Cannes is going to award a poster campaign (Outdoor? Magazines are often ‘outdoor’, as are radio ads etc.) then it’s great that it’s holding up the World Gallery/Shot On iPhone 6 work as an example of the kind of excellence the rest of the industry should aspire to: it’s a proper campaign that ran at great cost all over the world for a massive corporation (unlike another ridiculous and disappointing Grand Prix winner I could mention); it brightened up cities across the globe with a simple message that acted as a powerful demonstration of the product it was advertising; it was executed to the highest standards of craft in many different formats but remained just as brilliant throughout thousands of different versions.
Well done to all involved. You’re all very talented and I’m proud to work with you.
You’re also lovely people, so that’s nice, too.
Bx
Hear hear. Top work, MAL fellas.
Thanks, Scamp!
Great work. Well deserved, Ben.
Fuck Nils Leonard and his emporium of scam.
“Shot on an iPhone 6” is fucking ace and deserves it.
I just don’t think you can slag off Volvo Life Paint too much though – Grey played the game. Awards are an industry-facing nonsense – and I kind of feel like Grey appropriating a product and using it for a client isn’t all that different to every team in the world scouring Youtube for inspiration and then using it for telly ads.
It’s all cheating. But who gives a fuck, we’re an industry full of cunts innit…
Thanks all, but to Oh God…: that reappropriation of the work of others with little or no added creativity is what’s slowly killing the industry, or at least its credibility.
And when the credibility goes, the money goes.
Work like Volvo Painty Bullshit causes very real damage.
Great product benefit advertising win.
Truly lovely and flawless campaign. Congrats.
Fuck yeah. Really pleased some good advertising won! Great campaign all the way through to the telly. Inspiring stuff.
Excellent Ben.
Could you point me towards the ‘like’ button so I can register my approbation?
not only was it a great campaign… but it also spawned this:
http://alsoshotoniphone6.tumblr.com/
My fucking iphone 6 doesn’t take shots as good as those ones. What’s fucking wrong with it? Does it need an upgrade or something?
Finally a well deserved winner that proves simplicity still has it amongst all the dodgy case studies and people talking shite.
A Grand Prix for some real advertising that actually affected real people. Lovely. Congrats to all.
@Mister Gash: I think Apple would be fine if you just bought an iPhone.
Congratulations! Proper advertising being recognised – great to see.
I agree Ben, that any work in any media that simply pinches an existing idea is the death of “creativity” in advertising.
But the industry isn’t being slowly killed. It’s been stomped to death and anally raped already. Look at the rest of the Cannes Outdoor winners – pretty much every ad is a made up, scam piece of nonsense. People are trying to ape the formula that’s been allowed to win.
And the tools behind it wander along the Croisette, pinching each others’ bums with glee at their genius.
Non. Sense.
And that’s my point. If the industry’s already fucked (it is), who can blame people (Nils) for taking advantage of what’s left.
Namsayin bruv?!
I do nawayasayin’, but I believe, perhaps naively, that if we didn’t all join the race to the bottom of the toilet we could instead get the work, industry and salaries back up where they used to be.
If you’re not part of the solution etc.
Be the change you want to see in the world etc.
Here’s my suggestion: create a new award show to reset standards. The jury consists of heavy hitters such as Ben Kay, Dave Dye, Vinny Warren, Dave Trott, Sell! Sell!, Bob Hoffman and anyone else I’ve forgotten who isn’t prone to the latest fashion and gimmicks. No endless new category bullshit. Plain and simple.
I blush at being described as a ‘heavy hitter’.
But if you organise it I’m in.
Really fucking brilliant mate. I am looking out of my window and there are about 8 of them down the Cromwell Road. And no, I’m not sleeping rough again, I work around there.
I may graffiti them later with some Life Paint.
“reappropriation of the work of others with little or no added creativity is what’s slowly killing the industry, or at least its credibility.” Mmmm… Isn’t that exactly what the apple campaign did? Then slip a logo underneath. Which also begs the question: if it was a HTC logo? or a Samsung one? would it have been considered award worthy? i kinda doubt it.
There are some crucial differences:
The Apple work involved finding shots out there that were created by using the product, so they work as ads because they are product demonstrations.
The YouTube clips, Paints and daft stunts out there simply combine two things that might be related in intention (or in many case, not so much) but have nothing to do with the creativity of the client or agency.
Our campaign is about literally showing what the product can do, not finding a piece of entertainment that distracts from the fact that the product does nothing impressive and slapping our logo on it.
The problem I’d imagine you’d find with having Samsung or HTC do it would be finding the photos. The photos we’ve used are the result of a MASSIVE search on Instagram, Flickr, Facebook etc. Far more iPhone photos are taken and shared with the name of iPhone 6 than others (especially HTC), so the work would neither have been as good or as global, so less worthy of an award.
And the agencies wouldn’t have taken as much care over the work. People who see this campaign have no idea of the colossal amount of craft that went into curating, designing, cropping, colour testing, printing, reprinting, media selection etc. that went into every single posting. We’re an agency dedicated to one client so we know the brand and we know what standards to apply in every department. I’ve worked in other (very good) agencies, and I know it just doesn’t happen that way anywhere else. That’s a lot of ‘added creativity’.
So I sort of agree with you: A Samsung/HTC version of this would not have been considered award worthy, but that’s because it wouldn’t have been nearly as worthy of an award.
Am I missing something with these Apple ads. I like them but award winning? Why? If canon did I series of ads that said shot on a canon would we all be getting excited?
Congratulations! This is fantastic and very well deserved.
I cee iphone ad in Cockfoster. Every day. Big bastard standing on sandy hill.
No see the cyclist covered in tipex. He dead now.
@ben,@M. and another thing. this campaign is a massive buy. it’s everywhere. Clients and agencies reference Apple the brand 24/7. What they conveniently forget is Apple’s serious financial commitment to making sure their advertising is actually seen by actual real people in the real world and not just some invisible social media wank. Other brands conceivably could have done this. But they didn’t. And we all know it wouldn’t have worked nearly as well.
I’m also delighted that millions of people are looking at a current CGP winner all over the world right now.
@vinny warren @ben I’m not trying to justify the other campaign in question – as it is clearly questionable. I’m just questioning if the Apple work is really worthy. You’re justification that they spent millions of dollars on media, and a huge effort of manpower in searching out the photos doesn’t justify the award for me. Apple has the advantage that it can afford to spend its way to being noticed, and can afford to spend it’s money on it’s own inhouse agency to spend days searching for photos. As for your argument that “the (other) agencies wouldn’t have taken as much care over the work” i think this is a… little insulting to those that do work for those clients, who probably try to put in just as much effort and care into their work as you do, they just may not be able to get the result.
The Iphone camera is no better than other on the market, there are probably even better – And i’m pretty sure if any of the other brands had created this and spent the same media, they still wouldn’t have won, not becuase it wouldn’t have worked as well, but because they’re not Apple. Which is a pretty incredible and scary thing.
Its in house agency didn’t spend days (months, actually) searching for photos; its normal ad agency (Media Arts Lab) did. It’s nothing to do with money, either: Samsung spends much, much more on advertising that Apple does. Unfortunately no one notices it because it’s almost entirely poor.
It’s almost entirely poor because the people responsible for it don’t put the care into it than MAL/Apple does. I’d guess that’s because they’re working on a brand they don’t really believe in or care about. I wonder how many of them use an iPhone. No one here uses a Galaxy.
And I know about the discrepancy in the level of care because, as I said, ‘I’ve worked in other (very good) agencies, and I know it just doesn’t happen that way anywhere else’. It really doesn’t. When I joined MAL I was stunned at the attention to detail. It is way above anything I ever saw at AMV, even in its best years.
And your last paragraph is hard to argue for or against. There are definitely clients people vote for more than others, but in this case no one else came up with work of this quality, so by definition they weren’t able to. That’s why they produce their advertising and we produce ours.
It’s not incredible or scary; it’s just what happens when you put good stuff (or bad stuff) into a process: good stuff (or bad stuff) comes out.
M, I’m not saying the media spend justifies the GP. the simplicity and beauty (and the fact that it’s a real world poster campaign, not an awards stunt)justify the award. does it hurt that it’s for Apple? No. but that’s one of the side effects of doing great work over an extended period. You get the benefit of the doubt from awards show jurors.
Congrats, Ben!
Great campaign, a worthy winner. Hats off to you and your team.
And yes, loving it because of its simplicity. So clear, so focused, unlike my comment here.
An actual outdoor campaign EVERYONE has seen and remembers.
It might catch on…
Talking of re appropriation – this is Cannes at it’s worst:
http://www.campaignbriefasia.com/2015/06/does-something-smell-fishy-ove.html
Isn’t this exactly what Volvo did, too? Just less underhand?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/willburns/2015/06/24/new-iphone-6-advertising-campaign-from-apple-puts-the-focus-on-our-creativity-not-theirs/
Does something smell fishy over the Cannes Lions Product Design Grand Prix winner?
http://www.campaignbriefasia.com/2015/06/does-something-smell-fishy-ove.html
Apple are telling me I’m shit at taking photos? Fuck them. I’m getting a Sony.
@Another One and Bus: so that’s three entirely bullshit Grands Prix.
Poor old Cannes and their ham-fisted attempts to get an awards show right.
Perhaps I’ll wait to see if there are any more bollocks winners before writing another post about it all…
Sorry to be pissing on your parade Ben….
Original photo as taken from an iPhone6:
https://photographicpunctuation.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/original.jpg
Edited photo (by photographer) with Snapseed (Google App for iPhone):
https://photographicpunctuation.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/15487441900_9dca0704de_k.jpg
Full story here:
http://photographicpunctuation.com/2015/03/07/the-story-of-my-shot-on-iphone-photograph/
Congrats, Ben. There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. I see TV spots for the iPhone 6 and at the end it has an AT&T logo (and other carriers as well, if I’m not mistaken). Do you guys do those for the carriers? I can’t imagine Apple allowing AT&T to do spots for them without some almost impossible approval process?
They’re our ads but as they benefit the carriers they also advertise them. You should see them for all the main carriers in your market.
‘People who see this campaign have no idea of the colossal amount of craft that went into curating, designing, cropping, colour testing, printing, reprinting, media selection etc. that went into every single posting.’
Exactly why this campaign is just as unworthy as the others you’ve mentioned.
The only thing people, real people, see is a big shot when walking on the street or through the tube with a bit of print that says ‘optimised for large print’.
So I think you’re contradicting yourself about campaigns made for juries, this was no different.
Game well played.
PS Samsung won a whole heap of lions this year too.
I don’t understand how this campaign was ‘made for juries’.
Congrats to Samsung! I don’t think they’d have made as good a job of this campaign.
Sorry, misunderstood I think, let me clarify.
By no means did I mean the campaign was made for juries. I agree, it shows off the product well and it’s definitely out there and visible, unlike some of the others you mentioned. So on that front, all good.
My point was that you sold its merit on all the effort behind the scenes, that people DON’T see, which I don’t think is a good reason to award it.
To me, just seeing it out and about, it’s just pictures taken by people on their phones. That in itself, doesn’t feel like a groundbreaking campaign on its own.
Oh…
I just added that shit in as icing on the cake, not to sell it. The ‘selling’ stuff is in the original post. I just wanted to mention that a lot of shit goes into making something seem that simple, just in case anyone out there is thinking of trying to replicate it.
Or, indeed, if they think it’s just pictures taken by people on their phones.
It’s actually *amazing* pictures taken by people on their *iPhones*, reproduced beautifully across the world.
Funny:
http://alsoshotoniphone6.tumblr.com/
The iPhone campaign was neither original, nor creative and certainly not worthy of a Cannes lion. This is a first thought idea. Several camera/film brands have done this campaign over the years, albeit with less media, but that’s not what distinguishes a Cannes winner from a non-winner. More recently, Go-Pro has been running this same idea for several years. Sorry kids, but the emperor is parading down the Promenade de la Croisette with a lion, but without any clothes.