W+K’s Neil Christie: my top tips for Cannes
The Cannes International Festival of Creativity, arguably the world’s premier ad awards, starts on June 21 and we’ll be asking some of adland’s finest to choose potential winners. Wieden+Kennedy London MD Neil Christie kicks off our series with his selection.
Top Tips for Cannes
Thinking about ‘predictions’ for Cannes, my immediate reaction was that not much great stuff springs to mind from the last year. And these things are impossible to predict: who would have guessed that the Harvey Nicks Christmas campaign would clean up last year?
So, I just thought, what are the things that I can remember enjoying, without going back to check? Here are they are. I have no idea whether the juries at Cannes will like them, but I did.
I thought the Geico unskippable pre-roll ads were a smart idea – use the fact that most advertisers don’t adapt their messages to account for the fact that everyone skips the pre-roll ads after those first five seconds. I hadn’t seen anyone do this before in quite this way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=31&v=pvcj9xptNOQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LztFgqvFjX8
This Snickers spot is a fresh take on an old-fashioned (not in a bad way) campaign that still seems to have “a lot of legs,” as we used to say. Nicely done and funny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqbomTIWCZ8
Being an old softy, I’m afraid I have to include Monty the Penguin. Another crowd-pleaser from John Lewis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iccscUFY860
And, I don’t even know Sarah Silverman’s ‘vagina tax’ film is a proper ‘advert’ and, as such, whether it’s eligible for Cannes. But the categories these days are so many and varied that I’m sure someone will be entering this for ‘long-form online content for a social issue,’ ‘best use of a knob gag,’ or something similar.
Will any of these pick up a Lion? Who knows.