Cannes Contenders 2024: Non-Network Creativity from Canada

OK, entering a self promo piece into Cannes is probably going to elicit an eye roll from a lot of people, because isn't that so 10 years ago? But hear us out. Even if it's not awarded, this is a bomb of a message about the state of our industry, and the jury itself is its target audience. So maybe it's less of an entry fee, and more of a media buy.

In 1962, Andy Warhol gave the world a new perspective on Campbell’s Soup through modern pop art. Campbell’s ‘pAIntings’ uses today’s modern technology, generative AI, to once again change the way people see Campbell’s, exploring the question, what would it look like if other masters were as enamoured with Campbell’s as Warhol was? With generative AI, we can find out. We built on the success of the ’60s with a 2024 collection of Campbell’s Soup Cans, painted in the style of past masters through the brush of AI. 

In collaboration with LG2, the hardware store Canac launched an unexpected campaign based on the best-known cliché about plumbers: the famous butt crack! Canac had developed a new kind of jeans called 'Dignity Denim', with these unique pants protecting the dignity of their wearers by covering up their backsides when they bend over. With this first-ever 'butt-breaking' garment, the Quebec company kept its promise to help for real.

Released on social media on May 31, the 60-second video featured plumbers taking part in a fashion photo shoot. Dressed in 'Dignity Denim' and looking their very best, the plumbing professionals knelt on the ground without shame, well protected by these new jeans, exclusively branded and designed by the hardware store.

Chief creative officers Alexis Bronstorph & Kelsey Horne: Predators have a new way in – through a child’s cell phone. Most kids have a phone by age 12, creating the opportunity for predators to make contact under the cover of social media. That's terrifying for all of us.

We wanted to help The Canadian Centre for Child Protection create a PSA that spoke directly to parents about the role of unregulated online platforms in child exploitation, with technology being predators’ new way in. To contextualise the massive scale of this problem, we turned to the Trojan Horse, a story so famous it has become shorthand for deception. 

We're so proud of how this came to life – especially the craft. While we only had sixty seconds to summarise the entire story of the well-known myth, we were able to tell a great, well-balanced audio and visual story. The craft of our single shot captured a whirlwind of suspense, eeriness and emotion,  and our omniscient narrator played a huge role in building this lingering sense of unease. The contrast of the audio ramping up in tension, but the visuals remaining steady and constant, still gives us goosebumps.

In 2019, Community Music Schools of Toronto and Kingsway Music Library came together to develop a groundbreaking fundraising model: Parkscapes, the first music library created to help fund music education for youth. The initiative is an innovative approach to musical collaboration, pairing local music producers with students to create albums intended for sampling and remixing by other producers and artists. The money raised from album sales, royalties and residuals from samples goes directly to the schools. Artists have taken notice, including Taylor Swift, who used a sample from 'Volume 2' in her song 'It’s Nice to Have a Friend'.

For 'Parkscapes Volume 3', Community Music Schools of Toronto needed a fresh new design that represented the true spirit of the project. It partnered with LG2 to create a vibrant design system for the release, and to help generate excitement around the album launch.

So, in collaboration with LG2, Dans la rue launched an influential initiative to help homeless youth last winter season. Called 'Change of Address' the campaign saw the two work with content creators Louis Blouin, Alex Beaulieu-Marchand, Emmanuelle-Salambo Deguara and Karel Cadoret, who publicly shared that they had temporarily changed their mailing address so that excess free winter clothes they received from brands were delivered to Dans la rue instead. Through this gesture, an appeal for donations was being made to other influencers and the general public, and awareness was raised for Dans la rue's growing needs and of the state of youth homelessness.

Within 24 hours of launching, the original post on Dans la rue’s Instagram had garnered 114 thousand organic views, over 2,500 likes, and 670 shares. Twenty additional influencers would also volunteer to join the initiative.

Chief creative officers Alexis Bronstorph & Kelsey Horne: Who said print is dead? We want to have a word with you.

 

To help ensure Canadians were choosing DoorDash over its competitors when craving McDonald’s, we developed a campaign designed to evoke movement and a feeling of rushing by. Because the truth is, when a craving hits, fast food can’t get here fast enough.

 

To illustrate that McDonald’s crave-worthy items were a click away, we visually elongated the ingredients of the fast food brand’s iconic sandwiches to create the effect that they are DoorDash orders whizzing by at light speed. But to us, the cherry on top of this campaign was the placement. We created an eye-catching OOH series meant to stop on-the-go pedestrians in their tracks in high-traffic, fast-paced areas of Toronto like Union Station and Yonge-Dundas Square. In this contextual framing, the motion blur effect was exaggerated against the rush of people around, demonstrating that as speedy as you are, DoorDash is speedier.

 

And wow, the response from consumers, merchants and press blew our expectations out of the water. The work showed up across Reddit forums and design magazines like Fast Company and Design Taxi. We may or may not have DoorDashed a family bundle of Big Macs to the office to celebrate.

The D2L Brightspace online learning platform personalises education for every student. So, to cement D2L as a leader in personalised learning, we decided to personalise the original learning platform: the school desk. Leveraging specific insights from students of all ages, 'The Unstandardized Desk’ could be reshaped and reimagined to meet their unique needs and desires.  

'The Unstandardized Desk’ was manufactured using Nordic birch CNC-milled triangular panels connected by actuated tensile hinges covered by a neoprene skin. The wood is a nod to the wooden surfaces of traditional school desks. The ultimate goal is to mass produce the desk for classrooms around the world. 

For more than 100 years, when the temperature soars in New York City, people turn to neighbourhood fire hydrants in search of watery relief. However, the existing hydrant caps that spray water are rudimentary at best, and are often left on unsupervised, flowing into the streets and wasting water. This is how the idea of ‘Splash Spots’ was born. We created a more whimsical spray cap that conserves 50% more water. ‘Splash Spots’ pays homage to something uniquely New York by doing something uniquely New York to it: reinventing the spray cap through creativity and ingenuity. 

‘Splash Spots’ enrich public spaces, save water, and bring joy to all of the five boroughs of New York. Their precisely calibrated array of valves and channels release approximately 50% less water per minute than a standard hydrant spray cap. The time and care taken to craft each of the four ‘Splash Spot’ experiences not only adds fun and colour to hot days in NYC, it tells children from every walk of life that someone out there is aiming to enrich their lives through design thinking.

‘Splash Spots’ bring four different water experiences to the five boroughs. ‘Sunshine’ spreads rays of water in all directions. ‘Blossom’ releases a cloud of refreshing water droplets. ‘Jump Rope’ creates a whirling ‘rope’ of water for kids to leap over. ‘Pinwheel’ unleashes a stunning spray of three rotating streams. All four ‘Splash Spots’ create whimsical water experiences that bring communities together and reduce water wastage.

Executive creative director Steve Miller: As of 2023, women still only make up 23% of the tech sector. That’s a problem… a problem Hackergal, a local non-profit located in Toronto, Canada, is trying to help. Hackergal is dedicated to helping young women break through gender barriers in STEM so they can become the tech leaders of tomorrow. This important gender-bias needed greater awareness, and Hackergal needed greater support. Ironically, whether they’re giving us directions or setting a timer, almost all of our digital assistants and smart speakers are voiced by women – they might be in the tech, but women don’t have an actual voice in tech. With this irony in-hand, we set to spark a new conversation about female representation in tech, and ultimately drive interest, engagement, and donations for Hackergal, which we did – to help give women in tech a real voice, and help give Hackergal, the platform to help them. 

Partner and chief strategy officer Tom Kenny: Sometimes the things that make a brand special or unique aren’t always positive. And leaning into these shortcomings doesn’t always have to be a bad thing. Case in point: for years, Canadians had been very vocal about their hatred for KFC’s fries, calling them soggy and bland, among other slights. In fact, they were ranked as the very worst fries in the category. 

In response, KFC Canada and Courage Inc. held a ‘Fry Funeral’ for its old fries, before introducing its greatly improved new fries. The campaign included a full procession in a fry-filled hearse through the streets of Toronto (starting at a KFC and hitting high-traffic locations like Yonge-Dundas Square and the Budweiser Stage), and an hour-long live streamed ceremony complete with a eulogy paying respects to the old fries.

The campaign garnered over 3.7 billion impressions and on TikTok alone, the videos amassed over 22 million organic views. More importantly, KFC saw a 8.6% jump in same-store sales – 160% above forecasted growth – reversing declining transactions. Brand love shot up by 300%, showing the campaign shifted perception of not just the fries, but the brand overall.

Baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani broke Coors Light’s ad with a foul ball during a game. Rather than fix the embarrassing flaw, in just 48 hours, the brand turned the single, damaged outdoor ad into an entire unofficial sports sponsorship – a special edition can. This was then promoted with an innovative use of outdoor media, running it during a live game on every screen inside Angel Stadium.

The campaign went viral overnight. Following its launch in the US, with $0 in sponsorships or player endorsements, ‘Coors Lights Out’ became a global phenomenon on social media and generated media coverage in design, lifestyle, and sports outlets worldwide. Coors Light even trended higher than the official beer of baseball.

The special edition cans quickly sold out in under 24 hours. The demand was so high that fans added their own black squares to existing cans, merch, and anything else with the Coors Light logo. Even the broken panel itself became a piece of baseball memorabilia that was auctioned off to collectors for over $7,000. 

Ohtani's fans in his home country were also eager to participate in the experience. So, Coors Light made brand history by bringing its cans to Japan for the first time ever.

Despite a growing interest in women’s sports, awareness of individual female athletes lags in comparison to their male counterparts. Molson, the official beer of hockey, wanted to use its new multi-year partnership with the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) to bring greater visibility to these athletes.

So, Molson sponsored the space above hockey jersey numbers, a space where player’s names were usually covered by their hair. By sacrificing its name to allow hers to be seen, Molson became the first ever ‘hidden sponsor’, and brought these incredible athletes to the forefront, inspiring leagues everywhere to make changes required to better suit the needs of female athletes.

‘See My Name’ received an overwhelming groundswell of meaningful coverage, social shares and praise, not only for the initiative itself, but for the Molson brand, which translated to a notable sales lift.

The campaign received 241 online, print and broadcast placements across a number of prominent national and international outlets, including syndicates across Postmedia (Toronto Sun) and Torstar (Toronto Star) properties, CTV, CP24, Boston Globe, USA Today and Daily Mail, yielding a total of 2.9 billion earned impressions and a net 99.2% positive sentiment. 

‘See My Name’ also took social media by storm. The campaign received widespread praise from professional athletes within and beyond the PWHL, including tennis legend Billie Jean King. Hundreds of tweets and dozens of TikTok videos celebrated the work, with existing fans doubling down on their commitment to the brand, and gen z audiences who were previously unaware of Molson now proclaiming ‘ride or die’ status.

Partner and chief strategy officer Tom Kenny: Becoming a parent can be one of life’s most rewarding experiences. But, for first-timers, it’s also scary, overwhelming, and confusing. North York General Hospital, one of the busiest birthing centres in Ontario, and Courage, knew this first hand. Most of the team working on this project were new parents themselves. In fact, one team member had even given birth at North York General a couple months prior. 

So, to help soon-to-be parents and caregivers prepare for the next chapter, North York and Courage partnered to create ‘What No One Tells You When You’re Expecting’, an eye-opening 150-page book written from the personal experiences of real parents. 

The campaign instantly sparked interest among top-tier news shows, garnering segments on Your Morning, CBC, and Canada’s longest running show for women, Cityline. Upon its release, ‘What No One Tells You When You’re Expecting’ debuted at number one on Amazon’s Pregnancy & Childbirth bestseller list, and was the number one most gifted book in the category.