Cannes Lion Advertising Awards

With the conclusion of last week’s Cannes Lion Advertising Awards and Show, there is a lot of fascinating news that has great impact on the marketing and advertising industry.

The first item is the winning of both top awards, the Titanium and the Integrated, by Obama’s campaigns in 2008. The judges noted that this was not a vote for Obama, but an acknowledgement that his campaigns broke new ground and “redefined” the campaign, overall. This is an unprecendented move for the judges at Cannes Lions, who said that this campaign was a “game changer.”

It just goes to show that, at least at the highest levels of politics, media savviness is no longer a luxury but part of the soup you need to swim in. We all watched it happen–how the campaign combined the offline, online, social, and media aspects into one, single, story-telling machine. Did any of us realize at the time, just what an incredible feat that was? Perhaps it is with the perspective of time (in this accelerated world, that means 6 months), that we can start to truly appreciate just how this will effect every (at least, national) campaigns that will follow.  If any candidate in the future doesn’t run a campaign this way, no one will question why they lose.