You Say You Want "Une Révolution"
By Brett McKenzie on Jul 12, 2019
Celebrating Bastille Day with ten French winners from this year's One Show and ADC Awards
Last week was Independence Day here in the US, and this weekend our French friends have their own big national holiday, fireworks and all. Yes, it was 230 years ago this Sunday, rebels stormed the Bastille, serving notice to the monarchy and jump-starting the French Revolution.
France consistently scores among the top countries in the world when it comes to award show wins, and this year is no exception, ranking third at The One Show and sixth at the ADC Annual Awards. Ahead of this weekend's Bastille Day festivities, we're saluting Gallic greatness in the form of ten Pencil and Cube winners from this year's awards.
1.
It's hard to think of fruits and vegetables being illegal, but European regulations have significantly reduced the varieties of produce that farmers are allowed to grow.for the public — to the benefit of the agrochemical lobby, and the detriment of, well, everybody else. French supermarket giant Carrefour teamed up with Marcel to brazenly flout the law, encouraging farmers to grow produce from unregulated seeds, then selling them quite literally on the black market: specially constructed areas within their stores. The initiative raised awareness about the laws and helped to have them changed across the EU. "Black Supermarket" won one Gold Pencil and four Silver Pencils at this year's One Show,
2.
Keep your Batman and Avengers, over in Europe Donald Duck is one of the most popular comic book characters, with decades of issues that never see American shores. And when one of these beloved comic books winds up in the hands (beak?) of an impressionable young real-world duckling, some real magic happens.
"The Little Duck" was created by BETC for Disneyland Paris, and it won a Silver Cube for Craft in Video and Animation, as well as a Bronze Pencil for Animation at the ADC 98th Annual Awards. More importantly, it dropped a neutron bomb of cuteness on the ceremony, eliciting the most emotional "awwwwwwwww" of the evening..
3.
Long gone are the days of Pac-Man and Donkey Kong; today's video games rival the scope of even the most epic of cinematic blockbusters. And just like the movies, these games can have their "cast of thousands" — the NPCs or non-playable characters that populate the worlds through which our heroes go adventuring.
In order to promote Assassin's Creed Odyssey, the latest installment in Ubisoft's long-running series, DDB Paris brought the game's background characters and bit parts to the forefront to tell their stories in the most humorously incongruous way possible for a game set in ancient Greece — a modern-day social media takeover. "My Life As A NPC" won a Gold and a Silver One Show Pencil, as well as a Gold and a Silver ADC Cube.
4.
Everyone loves a good whodunit, a gripping crime drama where you're forever second-guessing who did the crime. France 3 had such a program on their hands when they produced La Forêt (The Forest), a six-part series in which police are investigating the disappearance of a teenaged girl. Publicis Conseil got in on the mystery by producing "Bet On A Murderer", a unique second screen experience where viewers could follow the live broadcast and place real-time, real-world bets on the identity of the killer, courtesy of online gambling platform Winamax.
The audience may have been betting on a murderer, but it was Publicis' gamble that paid off; "La Forêt" won three Gold Pencils, a Silver Pencil and four Bronze Pencils at The One Show.
5.
Leave it to the French to create a McDonald's ad that looks like an Impressionist painting. To help sell the fast food monolith's delivery service, TBWA\Paris brought on photographer Roberto Badin to shoot the city streets through rain-soaked windows. Having your Royale with Cheese brought to your front door never looked so good!
"McDelivery" earned TBWA a Gold Pencil for Badin's photography, alongside two Silver Pencils.
6.
Remember when we said that video games were becoming more cinematic than ever before? Well if the games are telling more epic stories, it makes sense that the commercials for the games are too.
DDB Paris and Ubisoft are back at it again, transporting us not to 5th century BC Athens but to modern-day backwoods Montana, in this wonderfully shot spot for Far Cry 5, a first-person shooter that pits the player against a doomsday cult and its charismatic leader. It's dark, it's hypnotic, it pulls you in without revealing too much about the adventure that awaits.
"The Baptism" won a Gold, a Silver and a Bronze Cube, as well as two Silver Pencils and a Bronze Pencil.
7.
Although Uber is the Kleenex of ridesharing services — its name becoming a generic trademark these days — it's not the only game in town anymore, especially in Paris. Today the service competes against several other services, and the wow factor of being able to hail a ride with an app has definitely worn off.
Last Christmas, our friends at DDB Paris decided to bring some of the awe and wonder back to Uber by creating a fleet of vehicles that resemble life-sized versions of toy cars of Christmases past. Not only could these cartoonishly delightful cars be seen about town, but they could also be hailed by Uber customers for a ride not soon forgotten.
"Uber Toys" earned DDB Paris three Silver Pencils and one Bronze Pencil at The One Show 2019, and a Silver Cube at the ADC 98th Annual Awards.
8.
For those who know and love their vino, they know that a grape's terroir — the habitat and climate in which it is grown — can greatly affect a wine's taste and quality. Sadly, among the multitude of other issues that climate change threatens to unleash upon our world if left unchecked, the wine regions of France are threatened by a forever altered climate.
To help demonstrate the disastrous effects of climate change on one of France's greatest exports, McCann Paris teamed with The Association of Journalists for the Environment to create "Bordeaux 2050", a special wine made from grapes grown in parts of the world already subject to the kind of climate that scientists predict will affect the Bordeaux region in thirty years. The result: a dry, tannic blend that is unrecognizable as a classic Bordeaux, and a wake-up call for those who enjoy wine but don't generally pay attention to climate change.
"Bordeaux 5050" won a Silver Pencil for Innovation in Branded Entertainment at this year's One Show.
9.
Violence against the LGBTQ community is a frighteningly common occurrence, but most attacks never make the headlines due to the anonymity of the victims. FF and Urgence Homophobie sought to give voices to the victims by putting their words into the social feeds of French celebrities as if the assaults and abuse had happened to them. By harnessing the popularity of these stars on various social media platforms, the stories that don't make the evening news are still told.
"Their Story Is My Story" won a Silver Pencil for multi-channel Social Influencer Marketing.
10.
We're closing off our list with the biggest French win of the year, courtesy of BETC and Lacoste. To raise awareness for endangered species on behalf of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the iconic Lacoste crocodile was removed from Lacoste's classic white polos and replaced with ten different animals, all on the brink of extinction. Lacoste only produced as many polos as there were of these various animals left alive in the world, making the shirts just as rare as the animals themselves.
"Save Our Species" won two Gold, one Silver and one Bronze Cube, plus a Gold and two Bronze Pencils and the highly coveted Green Pencil, awarded to the singular entry that best exemplifies an environmental cause.
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