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Canada won a Grand Prix Tuesday night in Cannes—well, sort of. Momentum Toronto can rightfully claim to have won the top prize in the Industry Craft Lions, although the award is shared with Momentum Worldwide New York. In the official national tally kept by the Festival, the award points will be with the U.S. office.*
For “Just Do It HQ at The Church,” Momentum and Nike converted an empty church in a troubled Chicago neighbourhood into a basketball training facility. More than 2,000 kids attended the month-long program, which generated more than 125 million earned media impressions. Ten Nike athletes, including former Chicago Bulls star Scotti Pippen and the Washington Wizards’ Jabari Parker, made appearances at the facility.
“The reason why [it won] in the end was that it was bigger than just an idea,” said jury president Trevor Robinson, founder and executive creative director of Quiet Storm. “I felt it was something that was very close to my heart. It’s very close to a lot of our hearts.”
The work was entered in the Brand & Communication Design Category which is described as “including brand identity, logo design, self-promotion, brand environment design, brand collateral, corporate comms, promotional items and other comprehensive branding programmes.”
“What we were really impressed with is Nike didn’t try and smash lots of logos everywhere to try and dominate. It’s a church and it became a haven for these kids,” said Robinson. “It was so tastefully done. I think this is what impressed us. And also emotionally, it just blew us all away.”
Lg2 Canada also collected a Bronze Lion in the category for its “Subjectif” campaign for 13th Street Winery. The campaign acknowledged that people have a pre-conceived notion of how a wine will taste based on ratings, reviews, price and the grape varietal.
The ensuing campaign removed all of the information from 12 different varietals, with information about what type of wine people had been drinking not revealed until the bottle was empty.
Subjectif Wine from lg2 Toronto on Vimeo.
Film Craft
BBDO won a Silver Lion for “We Rise” for Right To Play, along with production partners Skin & Bones, Moonlighting (Cape Town), The Assembly (Toronto), Pirate Group (Toronto) and Alter Ego (Toronto). Bensimon Byrne’s “Boys Don’t’ Cry” won two Bronze Lions, with the listed production partners Untitled Films (Toronto), Rooster Post Production (Toronto), Alter Ego (Toronto) and Berkeley (Toronto). “Boys Don’t Cry” also won a Bronze Lion in the Health & Wellness Lions Monday night.
We Rise
Boys Don’t Cry
The Grand Prix went to the New York Times “Truth is Worth it” campaign’s four executions:“Resolve/Rigor/Courage/Perserverance” from Droga5. Production companies credited were Final Cut, New York; Furlined, Santa Monica, and Significant Others, New York.
Despite taking eight days to get through judging—a record for the Festival—the jury didn’t need to debate long when it came to the Grand Prix said jury president Rebecca Skinner, managing director/executive producer, Supreme Films. “Obviously the messaging is incredibly important; it speaks to the truth, which I think as a society we all want,” she said.
“But this particular idea was so complemented by the craft in every single aspect that it was seamless, and it was immersive, never taking you out. But without one piece of it being crafted in the perfect way, it would have hurt the other piece.
“I think the hardest decision was where to give it a Grand Prix, because sound was equally as good as editing,” she added. “They all really came together and one without the other doesn’t really do justice to what the campaign and the messaging was.”
Digital Craft
In the Digital Craft, Jam3 won a Bronze for “ComplexCon” for Adidas Originals, along with production partners We Are Royale (Los Angeles), Kindly Beast (Ottawa), PixelPusher (Toronto), ASA Digital (Toronto).
The Grand Prix was awarded to Virtue Copenhagen and Carlings for “Address The Future.” The mobile program let users address a “paradox” of modern life: people care about the environment, but don’t want to be seen on social wearing the same outfit twice—a consumption challenge that is harmful to the environment. Virtue and Carlings created a digital clothing collection that lets users share photos while virtually “wearing” Carlings clothing that has been added digitally.
“I have to say that this was the most intellectually stimulating, and intellectually challenging selection of work that I’ve [judged],” said jury president Rei Inamoto, founding partner of New York’s Inamoto & Co., adding that the jury struggled to settle on the Grand Prix.
Inamoto said he told the jury that he likes to “hunt for those unexpected pieces of work that the world hasn’t seen yet… that have the potential for altering the course of either the category or the direction of the industry in general.”
The winning work “might cause controversy,” he said, “but I do believe that this was the most intellectually stimulating piece of work in the entire category throughout the course of online judging we had both several weeks before and in the five days that we had been in the room.”
*This story has been updated to note that the points were shared.
