Cannes Lions 2024 Grand Prix Winners in Creative B2B, Creative Data, Social & Influencer, Direct, Media, and PR
Cannes Lions 2024 continues! And with its third day comes more winners from six categories - the Creative B2B Lions, Creative Data Lions, Social & Influencer Lions, Direct Lions, Media Lions, and PR Lions. The six Grand Prix winners today come from the US, UK, Spain and Brazil – with two projects claiming their second Grands Prix of the week.
McCann picked up two Grands Prix today – one for its Polish Mastercard work, helping Ukrainian and Polish businesses co-exist, and one for its Xbox campaign out of McCann London that found a new tactician for a Bromley Football Club using the video game 'Football Manager'. The latter has now won the Grand Prix in both the Direct Lions and Entertainment Lions for Gaming this week. Meanwhile, Specsavers and Golin have also collected their second Grand Prix of the festival for 'The Misheard Version', claiming the top prize in the Audio & Radio Lions on Monday, and now in the PR Lions too.
Elsewhere among today's winners, we see a centenarian going viral to prove the power of OOH advertising from JCDecaux, a misinformation campaign from skincare brand CeraVe, and Mercado Libre's Black Friday voucher hunt that brought discounts out of the ad breaks, and into the TV shows.
See all of Wednesday's Grand Prix winners here:
Creative B2B Lions
JCDecaux - Meet Maria Prieto
After Spain's subway ad investment decreased by 7% in 2023, the OOH company JCDecaux decided to put a completely unknown 100-year-old lady on their unsold ad spaces to prove to brands that anyone can go viral. 54 of Marina's Instagram posts were displayed across over 850 spaces, leading to Marina's following growing by 39,285%, and record bookings for JCDecaux.
Creative B2B jury president, Andisa Ntsubane, managing executive of brand, marketing and communications at Vodacom Group Africa, said: “The story of Marina Prieto is the ultimate celebration of humanity. It's a story of intrigue, hope, inspiration and possibilities. A powerful, insightful and resourceful way of engaging audiences whilst proving a business case. A simple and smart B2B idea that proves that you don't always have to use AI or new-generation technologies to breakthrough.”
Creative Data Lions
Mastercard - Room For Everyone
Created by McCann Poland, Mastercard's new digital tool leverages the power of data to help Polish and Ukrainian businesses identify complementary locations to open shop in Poland. The tool expands on last year's 'Where to Settle' platform that used data to help Ukrainian refugees find places in Poland to live beyond the most overcrowded cities. This latest development of the 'Room for Everyone' initiative will help people not just live in Poland, but thrive.
Creative Data jury president, Rose Herceg, country president Australia & New Zealand, WPP, ANZ, said: “Our Grand Prix winner, ‘Room for Everyone’, is the best argument for creativity as the key lever for determining success. This work delivers socially, economically, geographically, and culturally. It helps create a booming small business economy, reminds us that there is more that unites us than divides us, takes data and uses it with such incredible finesse and achieves all of this in one campaign. This work is exactly what we are looking for in the Creative Data category.”
Social & Influencer Lions
CeraVe - Michael CeraVe
For Super Bowl 58, skincare brand CeraVe found its perfect partner: the aptly-named actor, Michael Cera. Created by Ogilvy North America, the campaign applied his off-kilter humour to gen z’s favourite skincare brand in three stages. Firstly, fake news made people believe Michael was the mastermind behind CeraVe (including a website, fake paparazzi shoots and influencer interviews with the likes of Bobbi Althoff). Then dermatologists and influencers started an online conflict to ‘debunk’ Cera’s campaign. And finally, the project concluded with a hilarious Super Bowl spot, directed by comedy duo Tim & Eric.
Social & Influencer jury president, Amy Ferguson, chief creative officer, partner of Special U.S., United States, said: “Our Social & Influencer Grand Prix winner is a wildly ambitious, lovably absurd, multi-channel, ultra-modern campaign that beautifully blurs the line between social, influencer, culture and advertising. It’s hard to classify, which is exactly why we chose it. But one thing is clear, it belongs firmly in this category because without the brilliant use of social and influencer, this idea doesn’t work. The haters will say it’s just a celebrity campaign, but it’s much smarter than that. Most importantly, it’s a symbol that taking a risk on brave, unexpected creativity can be beloved by culture, the industry and the business’s bottom line.”
Direct Lions
Xbox - The Everyday Tactician
To launch Football manager 2024, the teams at McCann London and Xbox decided to give a small team a helping hand, by connecting them to a community of armchair soccer experts: gamers. After a global hunt, they selected one gamer to join Bromley FC's backroom staff, to lend his knowledge of football tactics and strategy to the team. TNT Sport followed the ups and downs in a documentary and Bromley had its best season since 1892. From a commercial perspective, it was also the most played version of Football Manager ever, with a 190% increase in players on Xbox. This is the project's second Grand Prix, also winning the Cannes Lions Entertainment Lion for Gaming Grand Prix.
Direct Lions jury president, Pancho Cassis, partner and global chief creative officer at David, Global, said: “As soon as we saw this idea, we knew there was something special. And when we had to choose the Grand Prix, we chose with our hearts, the idea that we felt was magical. An idea that ticks all the boxes of a perfect direct campaign, but also opens the door to new thinking and will inspire creatives and brands to think in different ways. Also, it’s an idea that teaches all of us the value of patience - turning a great thought into an unbeatable integrated direct campaign.”
Media Lions
Mercado Libre - Handshake Hunt
Partnering with GUT Sao Paulo, Latin America's leading ecommerce platform won Black Friday last year by turning its own logo - a handshake - into a massive voucher hunt across the world's second largest TV network, Globo. Whenever a handshake appeared on screen, a QR code for a discount relating to the programme would pop up. This led to 50 million vouchers generated and an 80% increase in sales for the platform.
Media jury president, Prerna Mehrotra, chief client officer and CEO media, Dentsu APAC, said: “At a time when attention is fragmented, this idea has proven that a strong insight can lead technology to reinvent the TV-watching experience in a clever way that not only drives participation, but also wins business.”
PR Lions
Specsavers - The Misheard Version
This campaign wins its second Grand Prix of the year, previously being awarded the top prize in the Audio & Radio Lions on Monday. To create a mass hearing test on a nation-wide scale, Specsavers got pop singer Rick Astley to record an altered version of his hit single ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ – but this time full of commonly misheard lyrics. In eight hours, 20 million people played the new 'Misheard Version', doubling online searches for hearing loss and making it a nationally trending topic on Google. Specsavers also saw its hearing test bookings exceed its target by a record 1220%.
PR jury president, Kat Thomas, founder and global chief creative officer at One Green Bean, Global, said: “Since the PR Lions first launched, there has been the same speculation every year – will a PR agency pick up the Grand Prix? I could not be more delighted that 2024 is the year that history will be made. There were some outstanding campaigns that won Gold this year – work that was discussed over several hours of deliberation. However, the jury felt that 'The Misheard Version' over-delivered against every evaluation benchmark we set ourselves, from standout earned-first creativity to cultural relevance, right through to meaningful commercial impact.”
