APG Noisy Thinking: Planners’ Cannes
APG invited four leading strategists who care about creative output and asked them to nominate the campaigns and ideas that they think should receive awards at Cannes this year. The talk touched upon the recurring theme of the role of creativity and the scope of its use.
Their advice? Go beyond simply creating marketing and comms plans and assets, and instead think of the bigger picture for your client and use creativity with purpose. Humankind creates problems, but creativity solves problems.
The campaigns below shows different examples of this theme, creativity with purpose.
Theme 1: Using creativity to make the world more equal
First shave
A heart-warming advert featuring a young, transgender artist's meaningful first shave, while his father stands by his side and coaches him.
The campaign shows a transgender man enjoying the support of his family, shedding a rare positive light among all the negative headlines about discrimination against the LGBTQ community. It was launched at the end of May this year, just before the Pride Month in June in Northern America and represents a meaningful gesture of inclusiveness. It is also refreshing to see a shaving product not featuring the traditional masculinity, but challenging notions of gender and stereotypes.
Notable Women
Client: Google
Image source: Notable Women with Google
89% of people featured in American history textbooks are men. Notable Women is a website and augmented reality app that introduces people to 100 historic American women who have been left out of the history books.
Developed by Google in partnership with educators, Notable Women features 100 historic women selected from the Database of Historic American Women. The database was created through a US treasury outreach programme, which asked the US public who should feature on the next generation of US currency, and is available for use by teachers and educators through the related Teachers Righting History project.
The Notable Women programme shows the role technology can play in bringing history education to life and offering a new/lesser heard narrative in learning. It also has a 'For teachers' page, where teachers can download lesson materials for their classes.
Links: Notable Women with Google, Teachers righting history.
The Non-Issue
The Non-Issue Issue is a special edition of British Vogue, sponsored by L’Oréal Paris, to celebrate the belief that 'age should no longer be an issue'. Women over 50 are featured through the issue.
Viva La Vulva
Libresse conducted a global quantitative research which delved into how women feel about and care for their vulvas. They found over 50% of women feel pressure for their vulva looking a certain way and 44% have felt embarrassed by the way their vulva naturally looks, smells or feels. 68% of women don’t technically know what their own vulva is, with one in four completely unaware that no two vulvas should look exactly the same.
This led to the creation of a bold new campaign that celebrates the vulva in all its beautiful forms. The ad takes on a taboo subject with humour and striking colours, features an intrinsically intimate body part in an open culture, and empowers women to feel proud of what they have.
The campaign has now expanded to public take over, such as painting on public toilet walls in Shoreditch.
Theme 2. Using creativity to be more accessible
ThisAbles
Ikea worked with specialists to create 3D add-ons to their products, allowing people with special needs to enjoy the quality of life. What started off as a hackathon in an Israeli Ikea showroom turned into a global movement with the introduction of their ‘smart hacks’ product line for people living with disability, resulting in an uplift of sales by 39%.
Ikea has won the top prize in the Health category - the Health innovation award at 2019 Cannes Lions festival for ThisAbles.
StorySign
Client: Huawei
Agency: Aardman
Collabrators: FCB Inferno and British Deaf Association
Image source: Aardman: Creating StorySign - An App for Deaf Readers
A free app powered by Huawei AI, developed in partnership with the European Union of the Deaf and the British Deaf Association. It reads selected children’s books and translates them into sign language, helping to open the world of literature to children with hearing difficulty.
The app is available to all on the Google Play Store in ten European countries and free to download and use.
Theme 3. Using creativity to shift behaviours
We have to see more of each other
Launched before Christmas, Spanish liqueur brand Ruavieja compiled an online calculator which measured how many days you had left with your loved ones, subtracting the time we spend on technology and media consumption. Merging data from the National Institute of Statistics with creativity, the results are eye-opening and makes you want to prioritise as much real face time with your family and friends.
The campaign was launched with a documentary-style film. Within days the film went viral, and Ruavieja decided to divert its planned digital spend into sponsoring journeys within Spain for people to actually see one another in real life.
Check out the online quiz and start to give your love ones more attention!
DNADISCOUNT
Mexican airlines Aeromexico challenged small town Texas residents to take a DNA test to see how ‘Mexican’ they were. It is specifically targeted at states in the Western United States, including Arizona and Utah. Several interviewees express their dislike of Mexico, while others say they enjoy Mexican exports such as food and drink, but have no interest in traveling to the country.
The same people are told on-camera what percentage Mexican DNA they have. Some are dismayed, others confused. The same percentage of discounts is given to them on flights via Aeromexico, based on their percentage of Mexican ancestry, encouraging travel and tourism from the USA to Mexico. The awareness campaign shared the insight that within that town 54.4% of participants tested had Mexican ancestry.