Cannes 2012 Roundup & Trends

Regardless of what you think of the annual advertising boondoggle festival that is the Cannes Lion International Festival of Creativity, the fact is that it remains the most prominent showcase of advertising excellence.  This year saw Mobile and Branded Content get their own categories.  I highly encourage everyone to spend at least an hour going through the Cannes Lions site and reviewing the case studies for the winners in each category.  Without going into too much detail, the macro trend from this year's Cannes seemed to be awarding work that provided utility or gave something back to the user/customer.  As James Hilton aptly said during one of the Lightning Talks at the Google Sandbox 'the best advertising isn't advertising at all.'  Rather than try to recap the festival, I'll rely on the efforts of people more talented than myself.  See below for some nice round ups/highlights from the winners this year.

This comes courtesy of Bridget Jung, Chief Creative Officer - Digitas

I'd also recommend this nice roundup from AdWeek of all the Grand Prix winners for 2012.

Adverblog has a nice article on the overall Macro trends among the winners that's quite nice.

Last but not least, Contagious Magazine has a nice breakdown which includes snippets/quotes from about the work in each category.

But again, it's really worth spending some time on the Cannes Lion site and checking out the various winners across categories and the corresponding case study videos.