The 57th edition of Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival will start to announce the winners for its 2010 edition tomorrow.
The festival, which started yesterday with the seminar titled "newfound powers: The privatisation of social engineering", has gone beyond the digital trend to analyse the "new" marketplace being flooded with ways for people to share information and direct collective action. This, according to the organisers LBi, is leading the brands and their agencies to move into the unregulated territory of privatised social engineering.
This session is not the only one discussing digital advertising, in fact there are a host of sessions with almost all agencies – including JWT, Ogilvy One, Tribal DDB, GoViral, Initiative, DraftFCB, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo – conducting seminars about various aspects of the online media.
The Cannes Debate for this year will feature Keith Weed, the new CMO of Unilever, and Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP. Weed will be interviewed by Sorrell who will explore what global marketing companies in general, and Unilever in particular, will from now on be looking for in media and content – and what effect such priorities may have on advertising and marketing budgets. The heavily packed Cannes Lions seminars agenda will conclude on June 26.
Meanwhile, Cannes Lions is expected to announce the shortlists for seven categories today. They include promo and activation, PR, direct, radio, outdoor, media and press categories.
The winners in promo and activation, PR and direct will be announced tomorrow. Radio, outdoor and media winners are expected to be announced on Wednesday and press winners on Thursday.
Cyber and design categories shortlists will be announced tomorrow, with winners in both categories to be revealed on Thursday.
Film, film craft, titanium and integrated categories shortlists will be declared on Friday and the winners will be announced on June 27, along with the Grand Prix winner for this year. The organisers of the 57th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival had named Unilever as this year's prestigious Advertiser of the Year.
The Advertiser of the Year trophy will be presented to Keith Weed in Cannes during the Film, Film Craft and Titanium and Integrated Lions Awards ceremony on June 26.
Proctor and Gamble was named the Advertiser of the Year in 2008.
On a different note, this year's Cannes Lions Festival showcased its second edition of the YouTube competition. Titled the "48 Hour YouTube Cannes Young Lions Ad Contest". The competition attracted creative talent aged 28 to execute viral YouTube ads that would win signatures for a petition to save water, as a part of a campaign for Wateraid.
The competition, which received 530 entries and more than 75,600 votes in two weeks this year, won Andrew Dobbie, who works at JWT Manchester, the UK, and Rachel Wolak, who works at Crispin Porter + Bogusky in the US, a chance to attend the Cannes Lions for free and part of the Young Lions competition.
This year's Cannes Lions Festival is estimated to have attracted the fourth largest number of entries in the history of the event with a total of 24,242 entries from 90 countries, an increase of seven per cent over last year's edition. In 2009, the entries were down by 20 per cent over 2008.
Meanwhile, this year, there is an increase in entries from Latin America, India, Sweden, Turkey, the UK, France and the US, according to Philip Thomas, Festival CEO.
He said: "The figures also show different categories showing different levels of growth. While some traditional sections are down year-on-year, there are significant increases in media and cyber sections as well as in the newer Cannes Lions sections – especially PR and promo and activation, which have grown by 32 per cent and 43 per cent respectively".