Canadian agencies have snagged two Bronze Lions in Cannes’ Entertainment categories.
The Entertainment, Entertainment for Music and Entertainment for Sport Lions must “demonstrate ideas that are unskippable,” according to the festival, representing work that connects with audience in a novel way, with judging criteria based around the idea, brand integration and the execution.
And no Canadian celebrity is as integrated with a brand as Justin Bieber, so much so Canada’s most recognizable company named donuts after him.
Gut won a Bronze Entertainment for Music Lion in the “Artist as a Brand or Cause Ambassador” sub-category after recruiting the Stratford-born pop singer as a brand ambassador for Tim Hortons’ wildly successful “Timbiebs” collab.
After lending his name to a trio of LTO Timbits flavours and an entire line-up of merch for the QSR, the musician has since lent his name to a Justin Bieber cold brew coffee.
The Grand Prix winner in Entertainment for Music was Sony Latin Music’s “This Is Not America,” a music video for Puerto Rican hip hop artist Residente created by Doomsday Entertainment and Mastodonte that took a highly critical look at U.S. imperialism, specifically when it came to its treatment of Puerto Rico.
In Entertainment for Sport, Rethink won another Bronze Lion, this one in the “Diversity & Inclusion” subcategory for its work with the YWCA on the “Add the M” campaign.
The campaign, endorsed by soccer star Christine Sinclair, upended convention of all sports being male by default, by adding the letter “M” for “men’s” to prominent sports leagues (a la the “W” for “women’s” in the WNBA), creating for example, the MNBA and MNHL.
The Grand Prix winner in Entertainment for Sport was R/GA London for its work on the NikeSync, the shoe and apparel brand’s new menstruation workout app. The work aimed to educate on people could sync their training to their menstrual cycle to perform better, optimize their energy and listen to their body’s needs.
There were no Canadian wins in the original Entertainment Lions, a category where the Grand Prix went to McCann Stockholm for its work on “Eat a Swede,” a short film created for the Swedish Food Federation. The satirical documentary stars actor Alexander Skarsgård as a test subject for lab-grown human meat that could be used as a sustainable protein. The effort was an attempt to get Sweden to eat more locally produced food as a way of combating climate change.
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Entertainment for Music
BRONZE
Gut
Tim Hortons, “Timbiebs”
Artist as a brand or cause ambassador
Partners: Grayson Music, Boys in the Castle, Horizon Media, Media Monks, Rooster Post Production, Alison Brod Marketing, Craft PR, The French Shop
Entertainment for Sports
BRONZE
Rethink
YWCA Metro Vancouver, “Add the M”
Diversity & Inclusion in Sport
Partners: Grayson Music
