On the first day of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, McCann agencies took home two of the coveted Grand Prix prizes in the Health & Wellness and Pharma categories.
McCann Tel Aviv’s work for Ikea, ‘ThisAbles,’ found the furniture retailer making home furniture accessible for people with disabilities. The ‘ThisAbles’ project was made in full collaboration with two of the biggest accessibility organizations in Israel, Milbat and Accessibility Israel, which specialize in providing accessibility to people with disability and employ specialists in product, accessible, and therapy. Ikea developed 13 add-ons to its most essential products, offering them free to download and 3D print on a designated website alongside a full web series of video tutorials.
McCann Health Shanghai took home the top honor for the Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) ‘Breath of Life’ campaign, as it relates to creative data visualization.
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is the third leading cause of death in China, and GSK and McCann Health turned to mobile for the first-ever COPD self-testing tool in WeChat, China’s most popular messaging platform. The volume of breath blown into the microphone of a mobile produced a soundwave. Using the height of that soundwave, the team worked out an algorithm to arrive at a figure represented by a tree. The size of the tree represents the user’s approximate lung volume.
By collaborating with a pulmonologist and a popular Chinese blowing-ink artist, the team made the tree interesting to share on social media to encourage more people to take the test.
Design, Outdoor and Print & Publishing Lions were also awarded on Monday (17 June). In the Design category, Google Creative Lab in New York earned the Grand Prix with its ‘Creatability’ digital interactive design.
Working with creators and allies in the accessibility community, Google made a set of eight experiments that explore how creative tools – drawing, music and more – can be made more accessible using web and AI technology. The company hopes the experiments inspire others to unleash their inner artist regardless of ability, which is why Google is open-sourcing the code and creating guides as starting points for people to create their own projects.
In Print & Publishing, Impact BBDO Dubai won the Grand Prix with An-Nahar, the leading Arabic-language daily in Lebanon, for ‘The Blank Edition.’
In Lebanese culture a “white out” is equivalent to a strike or a protest. With that in mind the message of an entirely blank edition of the daily newspaper, followed by other executions, sent a clear message to the public and to politicians that the lack of a solid government was unacceptable. The idea was activated across social media where local politics remains one of the most widely discussed topics.
Nike and Wieden+Kennedy picked up the Grand Prix in the Outdoor category for its ‘Dream Crazy’ campaign, featuring Colin Kaepernick. This was for the billboard that featured a close-up of Kaepernick and the phrase, “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.”