Axe wins Creative Effectiveness prize

CANNES: Axe, Unilever's deodorant brand, has won the Grand Prix at the Creative Effectiveness Lions, which are supported by Warc and presented at the Cannes Lions International Festival for Creativity.

Over 90 case studies were entered for the Creative Effectiveness Lions, with 13 papers making the shortlist, with six ultimately winning prizes.

"What we saw judging is that creativity and effectiveness do not sit at opposite ends of the spectrum. In today's world where you can't buy attention, brilliant creativity is the only thing that creates effectiveness," David Jones, jury president and CEO of Havas and Euro RSCG Worldwide, said.

Axe, the grooming brand targeted at 16-24 year old males, took the Grand Prix for its attempt to engage younger buyers globally through its "Excite" variant, thus helping offset the 10-15% churn experienced among older consumers each year.

Research revealed that the younger audience's ideal was an obtainable "nice" girl, not the stereotypically "naughty" one, so the creative – developed by BBH London – suggested Excite could attract even the most angelic women. The campaign beat its targets by 7% and boosted volumes by 4%.

"The Grand Prix was pretty much a unanimous choice. There was real consistency from business strategy to creative," said Jones. "They showed it was more successful than the last two campaigns but wasn't for the one three campaigns ago. They didn't have to put that in. But it showed there was a lot of honesty and integrity in the submission."

Elsewhere, Snickers, Mars' chocolate brand, and AMV BBDO claimed a Lion having leveraged the insight that men are "not themselves when they are hungry", adapting it in over 50 markets. Some 88% of value sales were influenced by communications.

Another Lions went to Bundaberg Spirits, the distillery, which aided recovery efforts in Queensland after major floods. Partnering with agency LB Sydney, it held 16 concerts, raising nearly A$1m while enhancing brand trial and conversion.

Febreze, Procter & Gamble's odour eliminator, received the same prize for a "social experiment" where consumers were blindfolded and entered previously unpleasant-smelling places that were transformed with the air freshener. Grey in New York was the agency.

Chrysler, the automaker, and Wieden+Kennedy took a Lion for the launch of the new 200 model, which championed the car and the US auto industry with the tagline "Imported From Detroit", yielding an eight-fold increase in sales.

The last campaign taking a Lion was "Germany's Biggest Search for Missing Children" from Initiative Vermisste Kinder and Kempertrautmann Hamburg, together ensuring 45% of German consumers agreed this issue had gained greater saliency.

The winners were all campaigns that were shortlisted for, or received, Lions in 2011. The judging criteria gave both the strategy and idea a 25% weighting, compared with 50% for the results.

Data sourced from Warc, 20 June 2012

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