Cannes Contenders: The Work, The Work, The Work from BBDO

 

AnNahar continues to courageously stand for a free, thriving and powerful press, using creativity and innovation to do so. This effort carries on despite tragically losing the paper’s editor-in-chief to an assassination. The campaign doesn’t just speak about the importance of having different voices in a democracy, it actively demonstrates it with a powerful design mechanism in which extinct newspapers have been brought back so that the Lebanese people may read them freely again.

At M&M’s, we believe in the power of fun to bring people together. Earlier this year, we found ourselves in the centre of divisive conversation over spokescandy footwear. We wanted to change the tone of that conversation, point out the absurdity in it, and help people laugh and move on together. Now, we can get on with what we are here to do: create a world where everyone feels they belong.

Finally, we know they are iconic, but even we were surprised by the amount of love the world has shown for the spokescandies. People actively followed them as they pursued their outside passions across multiple channels. Someone even created a change.org petition to bring them back! It showed us that while there are many big things we don’t agree on, there are at least a few small things we do - we all like the spokescandies, and we seem to agree that chocolate is a better filling than clam bites. It’s a start.

The catalyst for this idea started with a tweet. When president Biden shared the statistic that over the last two decades, more school-aged children have died from guns than on-duty police officers and active-duty military combined, it shook us to our core. We were committed to raising awareness around this horrifying statistic - to shock people out of their apathy and recognise the need for action now. That is why we partnered with Change the Ref, a leading gun-control organisation, to bring the ‘New Recruits’ idea to life. The idea placed children in the heart of a war zone, showcasing the shocking fact that if they were active-duty military, they might face a safer reality than the one America’s gun-centric culture has wrought at home. 

For the Indigenous arts and culture magazine Muskrat, BBDO Canada worked to change the most widely told story of Pocahontas in North American culture: the Disney version. The project aims to bring awareness to the calls for justice and the stereotypes Indigenous women face, as captured in the Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) report.

Created by AMV BBDO, the campaign for Guinness 0.0 has been developed to communicate a message of moderation and to encourage consumers to try the non-alcoholic beer, with 50,000 free pints of Guinness 0.0 being made available across Ireland over the course of St. Patrick’s weekend. In the brand’s largest ever sampling of its non-alcoholic beer, free pints of Guinness 0.0 were available in over 300 different locations across the country.

Despite plenty of bins, litter is still thrown on the ground, which contributes to an increased sense of insecurity. This has been an increasing problem in the city of Malmö. It affects the experience of the place, giving the city a neglected and unkempt appearance with negative environmental outcomes. Cleaning up also costs taxpayers millions annually. Still, everyone knows that they shouldn’t throw litter on the ground, but do it anyway. We found that littering is highly irrational, and it doesn't help to have authorities pointing their fingers and threatening fines.

This campaign is about the risk profile based on the way people play video games. Historically, banks have provided financial products to people based on their credit history. This is how they get to know them and measure their payment behaviour. However, this leaves out thousands of potential clients who have never had banking products and therefore have not started their credit life either. How can we know their credit behaviours? How can we understand their personality traits more deeply to get to know them better? The answer was in video games. When people play games, they react in an authentic and natural way. They reveal personality characteristics such as decision making, problem solving, resource managing, among others. All of them are important factors in providing a financial product, or not. That’s why we partnered with soft skills games and Steam to create a platform that profiles people in a non-intrusive way. All they have to do is play the game of their choice for 15 hours. It doesn’t matter if they are experts or beginners, what really matters is what their in-game behaviours reveal. Meanwhile, a risk analyst creates a profile of each person and decides whether to approve the financial products they are applying for.

Kintab (meaning ‘shine’ in Filipino) worked with BBDO Guerrero to create and launch a campaign that would connect with consumers and inform them of the greater environmental benefits of brushing with Kintab. We believe that a simple redesign can do wonders to everyday products. Our partnership with Kintab is a testament of how the creative industry can proudly contribute in furthering local businesses and championing environmental sustainability.

Habib's, a Brazilian fast-food chain, differentiated itself from competitors by selling sfihas, a unique snack. However, their traditional flavours were not competitive enough against global chains such as McDonald's, Burger King, Taco Bell and KFC. To compete, they underwent a major transformation. And not only in their messaging. They changed their main product, launching new flavours such as ‘Big Mac’ and ‘Whopper’ sfihas. This transformation not only changed the menu but also involved retraining over 3,000 kitchen staff. The ‘Tastes Like Competition’ campaign successfully changed the perception of Habib's, proving that everything tastes better on a sfiha.

BBDO Dusseldorf and Caviar partnered with the Alzheimer Forschung Initiative (AFI) to launch a new campaign to support and get donations for Alzheimer’s research. Based on the insight that Alzheimer’s is a glitch in the patient’s brain, the social film 'The Glitch' was created using a Datamosh glitch effect to showcase the confused and frustrating moments that a person living with the disease and their relatives can experience. The goal was to target a younger audience using a popular visual language to spread the message.

To avoid expensive celebrity voice talent and pricey recording studios, Kiwi telco Skinny launched ‘Phone It In’, a low-cost campaign developed by Colenso BBDO that lets Kiwis record Skinny radio ads on their mobile phone, for free.

 

The DiversiTree Project is an inventive, audacious initiative that really brings to life Claritin’s brand’s commitment to those living with allergies. It was a very timely idea, but the beauty of it is that the idea will live on for generations to come.