As the Cannes winners continue to trickle out, we’ll have plenty more to say about the implications for marketing trends at large. But, we felt like we had to say something about the winner of the Cannes Direct Lion, shown in the video above.
The award went to New Zealand’s Special Group, for their work for broadband provider Orcon. The campaign called for amateur musicians to audition for a re-recording of Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger,” with the perennially shirtless frontman himself delivering vocals. But, the eight winning musicians didn’t receive airfare. They weren’t put up in hotels, or given a night on the town with Iggy, or even a continental breakfast. It’s not because the campaign was run by a bunch of cheapskates. It’s because the musicians would be be providing their contributions live, from home, over the web.
It takes a pretty fast connection to have eight musicians collaborate in high-quality and in real-time, which is exactly what the campaign intended to demonstrate. Orcon shows you, rather than tells you, how dependably fast their service is. In other words, it’s one of those simple ideas, brilliantly activated that get us all in a tizzy here at Upshot. A well-deserved Lion, in our opinion.
