Cannes International Ad Festival
The Advertising Industry's Most Prestigious Annual Gathering
For ad enthusiasts and professionals, the Cannes International Advertising Festival is where to be each June. But for those unable to attend the week-long celebration on the French Riviera, the festival website is the next best thing to being there.
The huge, complex website recreates the 2007 festival with the same level of creativity in text, video, image and graphics that is expected of the 26,000 entries in the festival's advertising competition.
Cannes is where they present the Oscar and Emmy of the ad industry: the Lion. The Lion trophies, given to grand prix, gold, silver and bronze winners in nine categories, were inspired by the imposing lion statue in Venice’s Piazza San Marcos. The first festival was held in Venice in 1954.
Ad festival highlights, entries, winners and seminars
The festival website provides:
- The 2007 winning entries in all categories
- Clips and images from most of the festival conferences and seminars
- Archives of 150,000 ad entries
- Prices and purchasing information on the DVDs and VCRs of the winning commercials. VCRs of the winning television commercials are 115 British pounds ($235US or $230C)
- Prices and instructions on how to purchase duplicate Lion trophies. Trophies are presented to winning companies, but individuals involved in producing them can purchase duplicate trophies at prices ranging from 580 British pounds ($1184US or $1162C) for a bronze winner to 1,405 pounds for a grand prix winner ($2814US or $2869C)
- Deadlines for the 2008 Lions competition. That festival will be held June 15-21
View the winning TV commercials
Perhaps of most interest, the website allows visitors to view, analyze and enjoy videos of all the 2007 winning television commercials in the film category.
The 2007 film winners included six entries from Canada, starting with the grand prix winner, and 26 entries from the United States.
The grand prix winner in the film category was produced by Ogilvy & Mather of Toronto to promote Unilever’s Dove Self Esteem Fund.
Dove Campaign for Real Beauty
Unilever's entry is a one-minute corporate image commercial titled "Evolution." It depicts, in very fast motion, the re-imagining of an attractive but plain girl into a sophisticated billboard beauty, then closes with text that says:
"No wonder that our perception of beauty is distorted…Every girl deserves to feel beautiful just the way she is. Get involved at www.campaignforrealbeauty"
The agency said "we created a film that exposed the manipulation of the female image in the media. The objective was to encourage discussion around the subject of real beauty and lead people to the www.campaignforrealbeauty.com website."
The festival website says 9,000 ad writers, artists, photographers, directors, producers, ad agencies, students and sponsors from 85 countries gathered in Cannes to explore industry trends and to honor the best work in the business.
Entry fees for the 2007 Lions competition were 580 euros ($829US or $805C) per entry.
