Barack Obama’s successful advertising campaign in the US presidential election has scooped a number of awards at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Awards. Advertising agency Droga5 won the Titanium prize for presenting an idea that is provocative, challenges assumptions and points to a new direction for The Great Schlep campaign featuring Sarah Silverman intended to boost support for Obama amongst Jewish voters. As well as the video that saw Silverman urging young Jewish grandchildren to travel to Florida and persuade their grandparents to vote Obama, the campaign also included an interactive website.
The Obama campaign also picked up the integrated prize for its effective use of three or more different medias combining to deliver a powerful message. It was celebrated as a powerful combination of a creative use of television, new media, online and grass roots door-to-door campaigning.
Obama’s election campaign also had a presence in the film category, with creator of Budweisers classic Wassup ads, Charles Stone III, being awarded a special jury commendation for his 2008 reprisal of the classic ad. The 2008 version showed the formerly happy and chilled out characters going through tough times after eight years under George Bush, being posted to Iraq and affected by the Wall Street crash. Unfortunately this ad was not eligible to win a prize in the film category as the rules state that all entries must be commissioned by a commercial client and work towards promoting a corporate identity design, but the judges felt it deserved special recognition for being such a powerful political statement.
Another big winner was newspaper The Zimbabwean, for their campaign which used the countrys almost worthless banknotes on billboards, giving a whole new meaning to sign printing and scooping gold awards in both the Titanium and integrated categories. Other successful campaigns included the “dance” ad for T-Mobile with a whole crowd dancing together in Liverpool Street station, and a paused bank robbery scene advertising a Philips TV in a unique interactive way.