Advertising has always been at the forefront of tech improvements. This is without option and the creatives are jumping on board. The Maison Samsung featured a VR surfing experience on the roof and a super-secret “second floor experience”.
The New York Times earned itself a double Grand Prix win for its Virtual reality initiatives. Claiming the top prize in mobile. “The Displaced” also took Grand Prix for its VR experience in the Entertainment category. Which takes viewers into the lives of refugee children pushed from their native countries. Entertainment Lions Jury President Jae Goodman, CCO at CAA Marketing, said the idea “catapulted the Gray Lady 100 years forward.
Two more VR experiences worth noting were, Lockheed Martin’s “Bus Ride to Mars,” view link here: (https://youtu.be/CWClyQkA32s) coming out of McCann New York and Goodby Silverstein’s “Dreams of Dali,” view link here: (https://youtu.be/I-Fb1lPL5WA) for the Dali Museum were early contenders, but ultimately, neither took top prize.
Charities vs Big Brands
A number of jury members expressed a desire to award big brand work, versus the smaller clients and good-leaning efforts we’ve seen in the past. A few Jury presidents said they’d consciously subjected work for charities to a higher standard on the belief that so many honours going for charity work is diverting young talent from work on big brands.
Previous jury members said that they would like to see non-profit work split into its own separate category, given that so often non-profit work wins based on the emotions it draws from viewers.
Multiple judges said that those kinds of entries often put entries that do actually solve business problems at a disadvantage and would be better off under a separate consideration set.
Artificial intelligence
Artificial Intelligence became a topic more this year than ever before.
Saatchi & Saatchi featured an AI-created film in the New Directors Showcase, a panel called “Will a Robot Win a Lion?” discussed the technology at length.
But AI also came up in multiple conversations among marketers and agencies, who are beginning to take more seriously what AI and machine learning can do for creative work — whether that’s an AI-created brief, chat bot or some other form of creative work. Asked if we had to worry about a “Terminator”-like scenario, Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said, “We’re not anywhere near that.”
