Cannes: the best of the second best
Last week the jurors of Cannes awarded Dumb Ways To Die an unprecedented 5 Grands Prix, as well as 18 Golds and some other Lions of various colours.
In case you haven’t seen it, here’s the case study thing:
It’s a nice campaign, but I must admit I got through about two of its three minutes before turning it off (no offence to the people involved).
Around the time its creators were rustling up an excess baggage payment for the flight home, one of London’s CDs was pointing out that by far the biggest ad/PR/Promotion/Innovation/Titanium thingamijig from last year won nothing, presumably because no one entered it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f-K-XnHi9I
The Red Bull space jump was seen live by millions around the world and it was universally positively received and perfect for the brand. The organisation and promotion of said stunt beggars belief and (sorry, little cartoon characters) was a far bigger and more impressive achievement than DWTD.
So my next question is: if the very best in the world aren’t entering Cannes, why not?
I’d say it’s because they’ve just created a worldwide stunt where a man jumped to Earth from space, so they might just be finding it a little tricky to give a toss about a tin lion (though that didn’t stop the makers of London’s Millennium Wheel or the Milau Viaduct from entering them into D&AD a while back – sheesh).
Apparently, Red Bull just don’t enter awards.
I don’t know why. Perhaps they are professionally aloof, or just don’t trust agencies to do what’s best for the brand if awards are factored in.
Why does anyone enter an award scheme? Because if they win, they get positive PR coverage. Red Bull don’t need it.
Ben,
Surely the reason it is a more impressive achievement than the space jump, was because they managed to make a very boring subject (rail safety), interesting and seen by millions around the world?
Only Red Bull could have done the space jump.
If you are part of something truly great then entering Cannes is well below what you have just achieved. If you have done something mediocre then Cannes is something great.
This is a brilliant post and shows the massive flaw in awards.
Red Bull it seems dont enter awards but also aren’t all these awards usually entered for by agencies so they can jump and shout if they win something and be ‘im better than you’. Far as i know Red Bull didn’t have an agency for the Felix jump. They didn’t need one, they know their audience and got on with it. If there was an agency involved it would probably never have happened.
I love the stats at the end.
20% accident reduction in key areas.
Where? Globally? Did they mention the gazillion posters that were hanging around said key areas? Was it because of that or the video?
40 million Youtube views.
That has to be the most important stat right there and says a lot about what this actually is. Is this the greatest campaign from last year, or just a very well done catchy music video?
Most shared PSA in history.
Easy to say when the internet wasn’t there 20 years ago. What about the pregnant man? Or “this is what happens when a fly lands on your food” ?
Charted in over 20 countries on iTunes.
So, they actually made money with a PSA (£0.79 a pop)? What happened to the money? Did they use it to improve safety at train stations?
I’m sorry, but I fail to see how DWTD is a good ad. A great music video? Sure. But in the world of great music videos on Youtube, it’s merely a blimp compared to the 257 million views of a Justin Bieber video. What if Justin Bieber made a song about teen pregnancy and how it’s bad. Would that win tons of awards at Cannes?
Sorry for being so skeptical about this. And I love Red Bull for not entering. Whether or not they did it intentionally, it still says that they’re better than Cannes. And they are.
@Roland Scull: THEY DROPPED A MAN FROM SPACE. FROM SPACE.
Roland Scull: Rail safety isnt a boring subject. Its aboout death. Its extremely compelling. Hence we all remember those 70s/80s public info films as kids. I actually think those ads work better than the animated nice film. As a kid I’d share that nice film and track, but not sure it would particulalry make me shit myself everytime I saw a railway, as opposed to ‘ROBBIE’ that PC Cary made us all watch in assembly in 1987.
Do you think there could be a category introduced where Cannes judges can nominate or select work that hasn’t been entered into the award – a kind of “Judges’ choice” – to honour that work or would that go against the whole set-up? It could be even more prestigious, because you have to be invited to accept.
I think that would miss the point for the Cannes organisers (ie: to make money). It would also undermine Cannes’ position as the ultimate arbiter of promotional creativity (see my post).
And Roland, I don’t understand how the point about Red Bull being the only people who could do the space jump. Lots of others could have done it.
My party trick: show Guinness Surfer when non-ad people bitch about how crap advertising is/was/can be. Same goes for Gorilla. Or Tested for the Unexpected.
I can absolutely positively guarantee I will not be showing non-ad people DWTD anytime soon. Or ever. At all.
a few years back (4ish) obama’s team entered their presidential campaign and won a load of awards. i think this is just a case of red bull as a company not caring about awards. good for them.
ps. dwtd is massively overrated and shows what a joke cannes is. its like the academy award for best film being awarded to a shit musical…
Cannes is always a joke when you don’t win,
What would the motivation be for Red Bull to win a Cannes Lions? The reason agencies enter is to promote themselves. They promote themselves to win more business. Red Bull didn’t enter because the benefit of winning a Lion is virtually zero. Why pay thousands to put it in when the job that they set out to do has been done already?
On an (ever so slightly) less grandiose scale, it’s the same for Dollar Shave Club. They created their ad in house to do one thing – sell the product. Why on earth would they give a shit about spending thousands to enter Cannes? Same for Red Bull.
Until you have an awards show that has no official entries (and no entry fees), you cannot have an entirely impartial show that takes all pieces of work into account.
@ Anonymouse: and even when you do.
I went to a pre-Cannes shindig where they were sowing the runners and riders.
Red Bull was there so I’m guessing it was entered.
It also looked like they’d spent a decent amount of time and dough putting together the case study film.
You can search all the entries on the Cannes website. It’s not a big mystery what was entered.
The video promoting the event was entered and didn’t make the shortlist. The jump itself doesn’t look like it was entered.
And some other Red Bull work was also entered, so their agencies do enter work.
An agency enters awards to show off and get pats on the back from their peers. Red Bull simply doesn’t have to do it, they are the client and unlike most actually do cool stuff and hence don’t give a shit about awards. They don’t need agency peeps to tell them how great they are.
It’s not entirely clear what applications this data would have, like the research on “passenger/crew exit from space.” The morning of the jump, people asked me whether the point was to prove that astronauts could jump from the International Space Station in an emergency. It wasn’t. Baumgartner’s 128,000-foot altitude (he overshot his mark) is only about 24 miles; the ISS orbits at an altitude of about 200 miles. Not to mention the astronauts on the ISS are weightless because they’re falling (i.e., orbiting) around the Earth at the same rate as the station, and that wouldn’t change if they stepped outside. It’s also unclear what other high-altitude/high-acceleration and supersonic environments in which people would find themselves that we need to know more about. Yes, there may have been some interesting data gathered from the jump, but it’s not enough to classify the stunt as any kind of research program.