GEORGE PATTERSON Y&R MELBOURNE NABS GOLD LION FOR ‘SCHWEPPERVESENCE’
George Patterson Y&R, Melbourne won the only Film Gold Lion in Australasia on the closing night of the Cannes International Advertising Festival with their stunning Schweppes ‘Burst’spot.
JWT Sydney scored a Silver Lion for Thrifty ‘Birthday Girl’, while Colman Rasic Carrasco Sydney won a Bronze Lion for MTV Asia Foundation ‘Different Lives’ as did Clemenger BBDO Melbourne for Carlton Draught ‘Skytroop’.
In contrast, New Zealand bombed, only scoring a Bronze Lion: DDB New Zealand for their VW ‘Finance Director’ spot.
The Film competition was of particular interest this year because of the opening up of the category to internet and ‘other screen’ films such as mobile – 388 internet films were submitted this year and 77 in the “other screen” section.
And it was an internet film for the launch of the Halo3 console game for Xbox from McCann Worldgroup in San Francisco which landed one of two Grands Prix this year. (The spots in the campaign were directed by ex Perth creative Simon McQuoid, now successfully directing in LA with GO Films).
The other went to Fallon London for its popular ‘Gorilla’ spot for Cadbury. Australian expat Jury chairman and global creative boss of JWT, Craig Davis, said predictions that the Film category at Cannes was dying a slow death were wrong, predicting Film was “back in a big way” and that 2008 was a “pioneering year”, partly because of the opening up to work in what is currently called the ‘B’ category of Film, or non-broadcast entries.
He said more Gold Lions were awarded this year because of the inclusion of internet films and the like into the Film category.
However, while praising McCann’s work on Halo3, some of the newer categories were uninspiring Davis said.
Much of what was submitted in the Internet Film section was of high quality – the formats ranged from 3 minute virals like Halo3 to episodic long form TV-style shows like Dove’s ‘Onslaught’, the follow-up to its ‘Evolution’ campaign. But other categories like ‘interactive film’ had no Lions awarded. “It’s pretty new,” Davis said. “The
[interactive TV] platform is a bit agricultural.”
Davis defined the creation of new categories such as online and other “new screen” films as part of the “push and pull” notion which defines broadcast versus interactive media. The new screen entries were about being “pulled” or
“distributed” by admiring online users rather than the linear, “lean-back” nature of broadcast ads.
Other Jury members said they were pleased that entries this year in the new screen categories were not full of YouTube style ads – one judge called them throwaway pieces – which suggested quality thinking and expertise still had some merit online.
Australia’s tally count this year was a solid improvement on 2007 although well off the high in 2006 when seven Lions were won.
New Zealand won four Lions last year, its best since 2003, but none in 2008. NZ had four ads shortlisted this year.
Australian jury member, Ted Horton, partner in Big Red, said in many wins the Cadbury-Schweppes ‘Burst’spot is very similar to ‘Gorilla’. This is because both of them are an amazing demonstration of the pure essence of what the product is and you can’t help but feel happy after watching them.
Horton said the issue of depth came up in the judging with the two Grand Prix’s representing opposite ends of the spectrum.
“If you look at ‘Gorilla’ or ‘Burst’ how much deeper do you need to go? With ‘Gorilla you’ve gone as deep as you need to go because the next thing is, ‘I’m going to have some’.”
For Microsoft Xbox’s ‘Halo’, on the other hand, one advert might not do it, you need to go into it and become more involved.
“That’s what makes it really difficult and I think if we’d just awarded ‘Halo’, then what we would have said was everything has to be deeper, when at times Cadbury, just with one simple, cl
assic, world-class commercial did the job entirely,” he said.
The jury also recognised is that in many ways ‘Halo’ and HBO’s ‘Voyeur’ is not breaking any rules, but playing by the new rules extraordinarily well while ‘Gorilla’ broke all the rules of that sort of advertising for that sort of category.
“So, in many ways ‘Gorilla’ could be perceived as more revolutionary than even ‘Halo’, which is just extraordinary. There will be some clients you just want to show the ‘Gorilla’ piece to say, look what you can do, there will be other clients where the ‘Gorilla’ will be useless, you’ll just want to take the ‘Halo’ piece and say, ‘look at what you can do, it’s extraordinary’.”