Canada had a strong showing in the Social & Influencer Lions Wednesday evening, winning seven Lions in total—three of which were Gold, including a first for the agency Angry Butterfly.
Co-founder Brent Choi was also on the jury, and said he felt enormously proud of the honour and happy for the team that worked on “Bill it to Bezos” for the Jane/Finch Community Centre. The breakthrough idea at the core of the campaign was to use an often-overlooked donation option in Twitch to divert money from Amazon—which is, of course, owned by Jeff Bezos—to the community organization.
The other golds went to “Runner 321” for FCB and Adidas (which also won a Bronze, read more here), and “The Cost of Beauty” from Ogilvy Toronto and London for Dove, which has already won earlier in the Festival.
With a smaller awards budget that’s typical of a younger agency, Angry Butterfly had to be selective about where it entered work, said Choi. So even to see its work shortlisted three times, in Innovation and Creative Commerce, along with Social, was gratifying.
Canada’s Social & Influencer Lions total: 7 (3G, 3S, 1B)
“And Gold is amazing,” he said. “I don’t know how many Golds are given out in a year, and how many entries, but it’s a huge honour, so I’m really proud.
And it is important for an agency—which has grown to about 40 full-time staff in the two-and-a-half years since launching—to win top awards like this.
Marketers may not pore over winners lists the way agencies do, said Choi, “but I think they see the name repeatedly. And whether it’s consciously or subconsciously, they thinking ‘Oh, this agency is at the leading edge of thinking.'”
And with both Creative Commerce and Innovation still to be announced this week, he is hopeful the agency will have even more evidence that Angry Butterfly is leading edge.
Speaking about the judging process overall, Choi said they spent a lot of time and attention determining what was a pure social idea, a social element added on to an integrated campaign, or something made for another medium. “Another disappointing thing is so many case studies that people submitted were the integrated case study,” he said. “So you’re looking at a two-minute film in which social is 20 seconds.”
But the Grand Prix winner, “Flipvertising” by Chep Network in Sydney for Samsung was truly a social idea, he said. “It’s great, it’s smart, it’s really well done.
When the larger jury had completed the first round of judging, the awarding jury got to review all the scores. “It was the top one, so our first reaction, without any influence, it had a top ranking. And then after we did all the discussion, it was the Grand Prix.”
The other Canadian entries to win Social and Influencer Lions were:
- Silver for Edelman Toronto and Dove, for “#Keep The Grey”
- Silver for FCB and Sobeys, for “Trending to Table”
- Silver to Rethink and Kraft Heinz, for “Heinz A.I. Ketchup”
