Creative Brilliance at Cannes: Our Handpicked Favorites to Spark Your Inspiration

If January is about being all motivated and starting afresh, February is about slipping back into your old ways and forgetting all about those new year resolutions. Are we right or are we right? Don’t worry, it can happen to the best of us. 😉

That’s why, it’s important to seek inspiration from time to time and what better way to do that than to look at some award-winning campaigns from across the world. We loved quite a few campaigns that won at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity last year. Here are some of our favourites:

1. Not a Deepfake but a True Icon

Cadbury India : Shah Rukh Khan - My Ad

Cadbury is India’s favourite chocolate brand. It’s part of our every celebration – big or small. But during COVID, people had very little to celebrate. The market was down and small businesses were the worst hit. What could have Cadbury done to show solidarity with them and give them a reason to celebrate once again?

Cadbury thought way out of the box and gave small businesses a chance to get endorsed by everybody’s dream brand ambassador – Shah Rukh Khan. They used AI to accomplish this feat and the result was a truly innovative and emotionally compelling campaign. Lately, many have been hopping on to the AI bandwagon but Cadbury has already been there, done that. It’s one of Cadbury’s most memorable campaigns in recent times. It has certainly made a place in our hearts.

2. Seize The Moment

PedidosYa: World Cup Delivery

It’s important for brands to become a part of the conversation at moments of cultural significance. In the age of social media, it’s easy to do that by just posting a clever one-liner or a meme on X. But to make a really impactful statement, one needs to be a little more creative. PedidosYa , a major delivery app in Argentina, did that when Argentina won the Football World Cup in 2022.

PedidosYa sent a push notification to all its users which said: “Your order is on the way.” When people opened it, it showed the trophy’s journey from Qatar to Argentina in real time. It moved people and got them hooked to their phones. It became the most viral brand action of the world cup and all this without spending a single dollar (or in their case Argentine Peso.) Now that’s called seizing the moment!

3. Less is More

ITV & CALM: The Last Photo

David Ogilvy said, “Big ideas are usually simple ideas.” That’s something that we too believe in. We love simple ideas that speak straight to the heart. That’s why, we really loved this campaign about suicide awareness.

It happens so often that after a case of suicide, people say that the person seemed perfectly fine. ITV wanted people to understand that “suicidal doesn’t always look suicidal.” To do this, they simply displayed the last photo of suicide victims and nearly all of them looked happy in these pictures. Such a simple but powerful idea. It not only raised awareness but also helped save lives. It’s work like this that reminds us why we do what we do.

That’s all for now. We like many more campaigns in the Cannes list but these have to be our top three. We hope reading about them inspired you in some way. Let’s do some smashing work!

Cheers,

Wishmakers