#365DaysOfWriting – Day Forty-Six
The winners of the Cannes Cyber and Mobile Lions are out.
For the non-advertising folk out there, yes, Cannes has awards for advertising, across various categories. The two categories I’ve been scanning are the Cyber Lions and the Mobile Lions. To put it simply – the Cyber Lions award outstanding creative work in digital advertising, while the Mobile Lions award great work in the mobile category (apps and such). Here are a couple of my favourites from each segment.
First, the Cyber Lions.
Justino, the night watchman: I’m a sucker for a good, emotional film, online or otherwise. Christmas ads are a category dominated largely by the British. This Grand Prix winner though came out of Spain. Don’t worry though, you won’t need subtitles. And that’s the power of a great film – it cuts through even language barriers. It was to promote one of Spain’s longest running lotteries, something the world didn’t even know existed, until today. Did it work? The results say it did: on an average, each Spaniard spent 55.34 Euro on the lottery, a big amount. You can watch this lovely film here.
Hockey Club Davos, Rink Bingo: This digital solution solved a functional benefit. Hockey Club Davos (HCD) is one of Switzerland’s most successful ice hockey teams in the rink. Unfortunately, performance in the rink did not translate to revenue in the form of merchandise sales or fan interaction. So what did HCD do? They combined one of the world’s most popular games, bingo, with a brilliant ice hockey insight – almost 80% of the time, you’ll see players crashing into the side boards of the rink. So they rigged the entire rink in a way that whenever a player crashed into the side boards, a bingo number would be activated on an app. The app was called Rink Bingo. So audiences in the rink and at home could play this rink bingo and in turn for getting the right numbers, they could win merchandise, tickets etc. This helped turn around the club financially like never before. Watch the case study video here.
Now for the Mobile Lions.
Whatsgerman: There has been a huge influx of refugees in Germany as everyone knows. Whatsgerman is a Whatsapp bot that helps them learn basic German so they can get help and just get used to the place. The initial version of the app came in Arabic and English, with more languages to be added later. A brilliant move by the German government, and one that deserves an award. You can see what it is here.
The Swedish Number: How do you promote tourism in your country? How about through the people who actually live there? This genius little idea gave Sweden a common international number. If you dialled it, you could be connected to any random Swedish person – and you could actually talk to them and ask them whatever you wanted to know about Sweden. Swell, isn’t it? Check out the case study video here.
