Cannes Lions

I attended the opening night of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity yesterday at the Winnipeg Art Gallery and as always, I laughed, I cried, and I asked myself “What the eff did I just watch?”

The biggest WTF of the night was Lady Gaga’s perfume ad: black tar, nakedness, and bondage-clad men galore. I had no idea what I was watching. It reminded me of her music videos, but with no Lady Gaga music. 

To be honest, a perfume commercial didn’t do the big idea justice. The idea of commercialism and provocative art just wasn't gelling this time, unfortunately. 

However, there were many commercials that made up for it. The Carlton Beer ad was perfect—just watch as the burglars and cops go over the hill.

Another highlight was Dove, where I cried, obviously. The sketches were heart-breaking when you see how differently people view themselves compared to how other people view them.

APES had a clever ad, which to me was one of the highlights of the night produced by ad agency Ogilvy & Mather Chicago. It shows what message can be sent when a gorilla and a can of white paint are mixed together.

The last batch of commercials of the night had a mixed response from the audience. Intel and Toshiba teamed together and made a series of videos (more like short films) that had the message “The beauty inside”.

The shorts were interesting to watch, but after almost forty minutes, it felt like way too much.

Visit http://wag.ca/visit/entertainment/film/display,event/521/2013-cannes-lions for more information on where and when you can see these awesome commercials! DON’T MISS OUT! 

An interesting question...

Filming a PSA is hard. 

It’s easy to think of a concept for a PSA, however it’s incredibly hard to think of a great concept for a PSA because, most of the time, PSAs are often heavy-handed or very cheesy.

For my Media Production class we had to film a PSA for a client. My group’s idea was strong, but executing it took a lot of time and patience. Adding music, the first time, made the 30 sec. PSA look like an SNL video short, which was NOT what we were going for at all.

Eventually we had luck though with a music track, and not to sound entitled, but I think we deserve a bonus mark just for that manhunt.

However, a lot of PSAs do miss the mark, and while ours was salvaged and the music complemented our final product, I can say, without a doubt, it’s effin’ hard and I commend the people who do it on the regular.

One PSA, which has definitely stayed with me since I watched it, has to do with bullying. The PSA from France asks, ‘why is bullying okay in schools when we would never condone it in the workplace?’

What an excellent question!

The mentality that ‘kids will be kids’ is an incredibly detrimental notion when compared in ‘Le Monde en face : Harcèlement à l'école’.

It’s an amazing commercial that everyone should watch, especially those who go to school and those who teach in schools, too.

Some of the scenes in the PSA are hard to stomach, but for some kids in school, this is their reality and yet, if this happened in the workplace it would be dealt with by HR and the perpetrators would be fired. 

What we need is an HR department in schools. 

What do you think?

I want those sweeties!!!

If I hadn't been so lazy this week, this commercial would have been perfect to post on Thursday during my ‘Throwback Thursday’ edition of television advertisements.

You see, for my marketing class, we were handing in an integrated marketing campaign to promote condom usage on Thursday and the commercial below would have been serendipitous to post.

Of course I didn’t.

However, let’s pretend that it’s Thursday, the weekend is upon us and it isn’t Sunday when we dread waking up early the next day to start another long week of work/school/exhaustion. Optimism!

Below is a banned commercial from, I believe, France (bons bons?) and it's absolutely hilarious. Although I can see why it was banned—the use of fear tactics is not subtle—but it’s a clever way to get the point across. Especially clever if your mentality is where the very idea of kids resembles the child in this commercial. 

Also, I used to be a nanny, so this situation is something I've encountered many times, and the biggest incentive to deal with a tantrum is knowing at the end of the day you're going to get paid for it. 

The guy in the video, not so much.