Cannes Forecast: Picks from a Less Than Vintage Year for Cyber

Digital, or as it’s referred to quaintly in the Cannes Lions, ‘Cyber’, doesn’t seem to have had a vintage year. Few pieces have captured my imagination. Is this simply because I’m not looking in all the right places, or that I’ve tuned out any distractions? Maybe so, but I know I’m not alone.

Where are the pieces of work that really represent excitement, innovation, creativity, and most importantly purpose? It’s this purpose, this ‘beyond advertising’ attitude that was once promised as the new frontier by digital that now seems in poor supply from the big brands. 

VW’s Driving Music Reinvented

Many brands use music to borrow excitement, added cool and the heritage they often lack. So when a car brand as renowned as the VW GTI, the original hot hatch, speaks about reinventing music, you know to expect something new, something different.

Created using the simple premise of making the GTI the instrument, and the driver the musician, this simple piece captures the spirit of the brand and the audience’s imagination. It’s pitched at the intersection of musical history, good times, and technical nerdiness. It’s a creator story about data; the telematics of the car, feeding in the preprogrammed loops, samples and sequences in real time to create a unique aural pleasure. The driver is placed into their own musical world that is happening not just around them but also through them, enhancing the idea of the drive beyond the obvious

It’s not available for download (not surprisingly), as uncontrolled use on open roads would lead to certain death. However the very idea of mixing the sounds as you swerve to the right puts a big smile on your face. In a world where millions are spent on me-too online advertising, this tech mash-up hits the mark.

Delta Photon Shower

The airline business is cut throat. Its wafer thin margins, large capital outlay, logistical complexity and critical security status all make it both burdened with conservative action and prime for innovation.

So Delta Airlines’ photo shower, admittedly in beta, stands out as a novel, scientific way in which to address jet lag, that unpleasant side-effect of intercontinental travel. 

It’s based on real scientific theory, the stuff that gets noticed at TED and actually sounds like the future we dream of. It’s a new proto-service, a tech-based story that is worth telling because you actually want to believe it, and more importantly use it. Made possible by Oxford University’s industry-leading research into the eye, it presents an exciting, optimistic and useful reason to fly with Delta over and above other airlines.

Let’s take this futuristic spirit and really reimagine air flight for the 21st century.

Sony Mobile The Take Out

Sony Mobile makes Xperia handsets that are very good. They are full of top tech that’s great for pleasure; with a high-resolution Bravia screen, an excellent camera system, tuned audio chips and best-in-class gaming features.

The Take Out is a branded content play, created to establish Sony Mobile and the Xperia brand amongst those that enjoy mobile entertainment on their handsets. Over the last 12 months, comedians Katherine Ryan and Eoghan McDermott have hosted a weekly show about mobile gaming, music and film in a quirky amusing manner. Its serialised delivery has become a poster child for how brands can use YouTube and it stands out as a bold and brave move from the Sony brand. The aim was to stand for more than just megapixels and contrast ratios, putting useful, entertaining content out in a way that enriches the mobile user’s life. Keeping up with the cool, impressing their friends courtesy of a brand they love.

Simon Gill is Executive Creative Director, UK at DigitasLBi