A few words about Cannes Lion Festival

‘’Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity’’ (formerly the International Advertising Festival) is the world’s biggest gathering for the entire creative marketing community. The five-day festival and awards explore and celebrate the value of creativity in branded communications on an annual basis.

There were many interesting advertisements at Cannes’ 2018 festival that drew everybody’s attention. One of the most creative of these was Audi’s award-winning ‘’Clown’’ advertisement, about which we are going to discuss in this article.

Audi’s award-winning campaign

The advertisement, which was directed by Ringan Ledwidge and conceived by BBH London, follows a troupe of clowns who are terrible drivers and commit multiple road safety violations, such as applying lipstick while driving to driving backwards. As Audi drivers encounter the wayward clowns on the road, in-car features such as cross traffic rear assist and adaptive cruise control kick in to prevent disaster.

The advertisement for the Audi Car was very clever! It successfully showed that the Audi car has a high level of driving security because when the car senses an obstacle on the road, it stops immediately. In this way, a driver may feel confident that he is safe. Additionally, the use of the song ‘Send In The Clowns’, sung by Faultline featuring Lisa Hannigan, was a very nice touch, since it refers to the clowns that drive the cars which come close to causing the accidents. .

The campaign had 8.4 million views across Facebook and Instagram and Audi saw a 2% uplift in searches for ‘Audi technology’.

What is Audi’s message?

‘’For Audi, this isn’t an issue — anticipating the kind of unexpected situations you may find yourself in, through no fault of your own. The clever and intuitive technology in an Audi is on constant look-out, to help keep you safe on the road. Watch our new advert to see Audi intelligent technology in action and find out why it’s clown proof.’’

Conclusion

We found this particular advertisement very entertaining and we think that it manages to pass its message: The idea is that everyone driving on the road (except you, the intelligent Audi driver) is a clown and isn’t paying attention, but with Audi’s in-car safety features, every accident that may occur can be avoided. We can see that depending on the topic, advertisers try to persuade us either through real life experiences, or through a social situation or by using humour. Humour is generally more effective to a wide audience no matter the age. We liked the idea that a beautiful, stylish car like the Audi can offer such protection.

How we worked

In order to work on this topic, my team and I sought information about the Cannes Lions Festival and the importance of this global event. Then, we watched all the suggested advertisements and together decided upon the Audi campaign. We then collected information regarding the advertisement and discussed how effective this was. After this, we prepared our Powerpoint presentation and this report.

You can watch Audi’s advertisement by clicking on the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWKdI6qMUNM

Team: Δήμητρα Κ., Rigo Pelidis, Theodora Fokaeos

Instructor: Betty Tsakarestou