Adam&Eve wins fourth Grand Prix for Harvey Nichols in Film, Titanium for Dentsu’s Ayrton Senna, bad luck W+K
Cannes 2014: Adam&Eve/DDB London won its fourth Grand Prix at the 2014 Cannes Lions, for the Harvey Nichols ‘Sorry I Spent It On Myself’ campaign which has already bagged the agency Press, Promo & Activation and Integrated Grand Prix. Forsman & Bodenfors won the internet films Grand Prix for Volvo’s ‘Epic Splits.’
Dentsu’s ‘Ayrton Senna’ film for Honda won the Titanium Grand Prix for its reworking of the late racing driver’s celebrated lap in the Japanese Formula One GP in 1989.
Our pundits tipped Volvo and Honda to win big this year but nobody saw Harvey Nichols coming. It’s a clever campaign but hardly a great film – it doesn’t need to be.
But these days at Cannes, because all major campaigns are required to work in all sorts of ways in all sort of media, a big winner in one category can spill over into others – as has happened with Harvey Nichols and, last year, with McCann Melbourne’s ‘Dumb Ways To Die’ for Metro Trains in Victoria.
Once again the unlucky agency in Film is Wieden+Kennedy Portland. Last year it won Golds for Southern Comfort, this year it won bags of them for both Southern Comfort and Old Spice.
But Grand Prix, as we keep saying, are Grand Prix and they’re what’s remembered. Earlier in the week we tipped A&E to break the record for any UK agency at Cannes and I’d be surprised if it hasn’t racked up the highest points total ever (no doubt the Gunn Report will let us know). It may well have won more than any other single agency anywhere, depending on how you rank GPs against other Lions.
What’s certain is that it’s now, from a start-up just a few years ago, one of the leading creative agencies in the world. One that might have a big effect on the future shape of the DDB network.
(This is an updated version of an earlier story – I didn’t realise A&E had bagged the Integrated Grand Prix too. What’s left for them to win – best agency in Paddington?)
PS Adweek reckons there are seven campaigns better than the Harvey Nicks one. This one will run and run…but A&E has the silverware, as they say in football. Are the Americans feeling a bit left out?
