Cannes Forecast: Saatchi’s Jan Teulingkx on What Should Be Winning

So, I think it’s quite easy to say what will win in Cannes this year.

Maybe it’s more interesting to write about what should win.

Heineken - The Cruise

I hope this film will not be underestimated. With Nike’s ‘Risk Everything’ it’s the stuff that made me smile the most this year. That is: as a human being rather than as a creative director. The message is very clear, the film great, the interactive part brilliant. The world would be a happier place if Heineken would only focus on producing advertising and stop their lousy efforts at making beer.

Unload Your 401k

An eye-opener. I have an amazing respect for the way they have brought this complicated theme to a large audience. Respectful, dramatic, visually innovative but yet so simple. I couldn’t say it was a case study or a film, but that’s the last question you should ask yourself when you’re watching this piece of work. See more of the campaign at: http://unloadyour401k.com/

Duracell - Trust Your Power 

Bye bye bunnies. Enter a deaf quarterback. Usually brands take small steps when they start exploring new creative directions, but this is one hell of a leap. 

When a brand of this size - this is P&G, people - starts creating work like this we’d better encourage it. This is not a small excuse viral ad anymore. This is showing the path for other large advertisers. A true story with an amazing production value. And did it work? This campaign has gone way beyond ‘likes & shares’. It has generated a heart warming response. It touches and empowers. Exactly what brands should do, and what we should do for our brands. Real thumbs up.

The Shinano Mainichi Shimbun – A Family Story

Whenever these media companies come in to tell us that ‘your online content should take no longer than 45 seconds not to lose the viewers’ attention ‘ I feel like showing work like this. It’s a 9 minute black & white animation made of 1918 drawings that come to life by using a newspaper printing press at the right speed to create an old school stop motion animation. And even if they wouldn’t have pulled that off you’d still want to see this Japanese family story about a small apple farm and a young boy’s ambitions right until the end. 

Opel - Gabriel

We often see ‘user generated content’ but generally that is used as an excuse to make the brand’s message slightly more credible. This stuff brings the idiotic ideas of the public to the heart of the R&D environment of a large car manufacturer. Let the audience invent new options for a car and you might strike gold. The winning idea comes from a regular guy that came up with a superb new option for the entire automotive industry. Nice to see an ad agency realising that the best ideas are still to be found in the real world rather than in a creative department. Fantastic to witness that another brand figured out it has to use its engineering and innovation to make this world a slightly better place. Exemplary... and isn’t Cannes about showing us the right path? See more of the campaign at: http://opelgabriel.com/

Jan Teulingkx, Saatchi & Saatchi Belgium ECD