Cannes Contenders: Dentsu’s Promising Lineup

This song by Dutch superstar Meau was launched to raise awareness about the dangers of online shaming in the Netherlands. Instead, it triggered a global movement; changing culture, changing behaviour, and even changing the law, with what has now become an anthem of a generation.

‘A Piece of Me’ is a rich campaign that combines many powerful elements. At first, it is a work of musical entertainment that creates culture and reach. But it also tells deeper stories – stories that can’t be ignored once watched as the topic is serious and will definitely move you. Seeing this work travel through gen z screens, school classes, popular culture, news media, and even Dutch parliament, while simultaneously lifting KPN’s brand metrics, fills us with great pride.

It is a common belief that patients with ALS have difficulty moving their bodies with their muscles. Project Humanity looks to change this assumption and create a world where people with ALS do not have to give up physical expressions and creativity.

Our ambition is to overturn the prevailing assumption about [fatal motor neuron disease,] ALS. Rather than accepting that people living with ALS cannot be physically active, we aim to shift the perception to recognise their potential for physicality. Globally, approximately 200 million people live with disabilities and have significant functional limitations. Our goal is to transform their daily lives. We firmly believe that this interface can empower them by providing dignity, employment opportunities, education, and economic independence.

Dentsu Creative Australia brought together ‘Bluey’, the world’s most watched kids show, and Australia’s most loved hardware store, Bunnings, to deliver a rebranding and integrated campaign that drove families straight to the store.

We’ve seen brands hack culture before, but this is the first time we’ve known culture to hack a Brand. ‘Bluey ’is the most popular kids TV show in the world, and it made a famous episode where the family went to a fictional version of our client's store. Bunnings is the most trusted brand in Australia, it’s a church for Australians looking for hardware every week. This idea brought these two brands together, quite literally. Bunnings stores across the country became Hammerbarn for a whole month, in homage to the episode of ‘Bluey’. From signage, uniforms, to products, everything was recreated. You could tour every scene from the TV show, and even buy the garden gnomes featured in the episode.

As the demand for more fresh food grows, the need for AI-powered solutions to optimise the journey from seed to shelf also grows. Organic Intelligence allows Nature Fresh Farms to use AI to manage their growing operations to generate larger, more predictable crop yields. With AI-optimised solutions, they can predict their yield a year in advance with incredible accuracy. This reliable growth helps create a more secure, transparent, and reliable food supply chain.

Not a lot of people think about where their food comes from, much less what impact it has on our planet. Organic Intelligence shows how Intel AI could take one small tomato and transform how the world gets its food, from seed to shelf.

To help combat the housing crisis, we worked with MEO, a Portuguese telecom provider, to design a national digital platform that brought together young students and elderly people.

Improbable Housemates’ addresses two of Portugal’s pressing issues: loneliness among the elderly and a housing crisis affecting the young. Combining the power of data, with the magic of human creativity, it’s already transforming lives. Uniquely Portuguese yet globally relevant, this initiative benefits both business and society.

Motorola Deep Connect is an innovative affordable and scalable calling solution, enabling the miners to connect with their families from underground through smartphones, by converting walkie-talkie radio signals into voice calls.

When faced with an unprecedented number of complaints after changing the flavour for the first time in 40 years, the company decided to go back to the original taste. To announce this the team in Tokyo transformed actual ‘complaints’ into the anime, boosting sales and going viral.

Across various social media platforms, harsh words are exchanged and divisions deepen. Globally famous rappers are dissing each other. However, are the critical opinions sent by customers in response to corporate actions merely disses that generate division? We chose to see them as love letters. Thus, we created an animation entirely from their voices, as a crystallisation of this concept of love, which allowed us to communicate our customers’ love, even to potential customers. In collaboration with our client, we carefully selected messages from customers to create this piece. This process became a vivid portrayal of the love our times desperately need.

In a world-first, Dentsu Creative developed an AI tool that enables people with intellectual disabilities to experience world-famous literature, partnering with Visit Portugal for the launch.

The joy of literature should be accessible to everyone, and I could not be prouder to launch Easy Reading with Visit Portugal, a nation with such a rich literary tradition. It's always our mission to pioneer innovative solutions that shape culture and society, and Easy Reading marks a ground-breaking milestone in the accessibility space. Now, all rights holders and organisations can adapt their texts for the 40 million individuals with learning difficulties around the world, at an unprecedented speed and scale. This is just the beginning.

This evocative timepiece collection, campaign and exhibition used patient artwork to educate people on Brain Health & Alzheimers, making the professional yet simple method of detecting illnesses, usually only done in hospitals, accessible to everyone.

Collaborating with partners like Jian Ai Elderly Charity Center to deliver meaningful impact on society is our commitment at dentsu. We want to give a sincere thank you to the Alzheimer's patients in the four communities in Shanghai for their invaluable input in creating this remarkable work. This wouldn't be happening at all if it weren't for them.