Awards Category - Creative Data

The awards category that I chose to analyze was Creative Data.  According to the Cannes Lions official website, a Creative Data Lion symbolizes "the interplay between ideas and information."  The jury for this award were to choose between many entries that use typical consumer data in a creative way.

There were 21 Bronze Lion winners, with the US and Australia tying for the most with 4 each.  There were 11 Silver Lion winners, with Australia dominating at 3 and the US, Japan, and China following close behind with 2 each.  Among these Silver Lion winners was the widely acclaimed "Meet Graham" campaign, which won a Grand Prix in another category and multiple Gold Lions as well.

In total, there were 5 Gold Lions spread out across multiple categories.  The first Gold Lion was presented in the "Creative Data Enhancement" category, which according to the Cannes Lions website are "creative campaigns elevated through their use of data models, including personalization, interactivity, and relevance."  The winner from this category was "Reword" for the National Youth Mental Health Administration, created by the agency Leo Burnett Melbourne in Australia.  Reword is essentially a browser plug-in that detects when a string of words that are being typed could be potentially used to bully; a red line then appears through those words, along with a message prompting the user to think about what he or she is saying to others.

The second Gold Lion was in the "Data Storytelling" category, which consists of work that has contributed to successful stories between the brand and the consumer.  The winner was "Aimen," an advertising campaign for the French TV show "The Young Pope" by the agency BETC Paris.  The agency created a fake Twitter account for the main character of the show, the Pope, and set it to automatically reply to "sinful" tweets with related Bible verses.  The campaign was a huge success, and viewership of the TV show skyrocketed.

The third Gold Lion was in the "Business to Business Data Solution" category, which is for data that is used to solve B2B problems in a creative and unique way.  The winner was "Sberbank Neighborhoods," from Sberbank Small Business Loans in Russia, created by Dentsu Moscow.  The campaign dealt with small business closures in smaller neighborhoods by allowing citizens to vote on what business they thought should go in abandoned lots through the Sberbank app.

The fourth Gold Lion was in the "Social Data" category, consisting of creative interpretation of data derived from social media platforms used to create a relationship with the audience.  The winner of this Gold Lion was Marriott International in the US for their "M Live" campaign.  Marriott used geotagged social media posts at their hotels to interact with their guests; for example, a couple that got engaged at the hotel were immediately sent a bottle of complimentary champagne, and a man posting about cool towel animals was given a free class on how to create them.

The last Gold Lion was in "Data Integration", in which entrants "must clearly demonstrate how disparate data streams were integrated to provide new insights from planning through to delivery of a creative campaign or client strategy."  The winner was AAMI Insurance in Australia for their "AAMI Smartplates" campaign, created by Ogilvy Australia.  They essentially created an app that acted as a social platform for driving; the app's many capabilities included "road block" mode, a leaderboard for logged driving times, real-time data to track how often you're speeding, and many others.

The Grand Prix in Creative Data was awarded in the "Creative Data and Collection Research" category.  The winner of this Grand Prix was the "Care Counts" initiative by Whirlpool in the US, created in collaboration with DigitasLBI and Ketchum in Chicago.  Essentially, Whirlpool put washers and dryers in low income schools across the country in an attempt to boost attendance, because their prior research had found that a lot of kids missed school due to not having clean clothes to wear.  Students simply had to input their student ID numbers into the laundry machines, which aided Whirlpool in aggregating the data.  They noticed a stark, sharp correlation between the kids that used the washers and dryers the most and the kids whose attendance records began to improve dramatically.

While viewing the award winning Creative Data case films, I noticed that a major theme among most of them is that of using data for social good.  Coming into this awards show I was under he impression that Creative Data was really all about personalization and user experience; however, I came out of it knowing that data can really be used to analyze problems in society, and likewise create a solution to alleviate these problems.