Collection
Cannes Grand Prix Winners
Work that took a Grand Prix — the top prize in its category — at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, advertising's most coveted awards.
2020s
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2025Act Like You Know
Actors, Walton Goggins tells the camera, can make you believe they know what they are doing when they do not.
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2025Vaseline Verified
Vaseline Verified began with social listening: more than 6,000 organic posts showed people using Vaseline Jelly in unexpected ways, from make-up…
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2025Expedition Impossible
In late 2025 Columbia Sportswear's chief executive, Tim Boyle, issued a dare to flat-earthers: find the edge of the Earth, photograph it, and you…
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2025Three Words
Three words added to an insurance contract gave people a way out of an abusive home.
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2024Michael CeraVe
A Super Bowl ad that was really the final act of a three-week online hoax.
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2024Recycle Me
Coca-Cola let its agency do the one thing brand guidelines forbid: crush the logo.
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2024All the Ads
One Super Bowl ad that turned everybody else's into prizes.
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2023R.I.P. Leon
A neighbourhood lizard-sitter finds his charge, Leon, lying motionless and anxiously texts the terrible news.
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2023The Everyday Tactician
To launch Football Manager 2024 on Xbox, McCann London took the series' founding fantasy, that a fan could do the manager's job better, and made it…
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2023The First Edible Mascot
A sponsorship that ate its own mascot.
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2022Less Talk, More Bitcoin
For most of a minute, a small QR code drifted across a black screen, changing colour each time it touched an edge — a knowing riff on the bouncing…
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2022Backup Ukraine
Backup Ukraine gave people in Ukraine a way to save their heritage on a phone.
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2022Flipvertising
To launch the Galaxy Z Flip4 in Australia in 2022, Samsung inverted the logic of targeted advertising: instead of chasing ad-wary young buyers, it…
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2022Never Done Evolving feat. Serena
For Nike's 50th anniversary, AKQA staged a tennis match that could never happen: Serena Williams at 17, when she won her first Grand Slam title at…
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2022The First Digital Nation
In November 2022 Tuvalu’s foreign minister, Simon Kofe, addressed the COP27 climate summit by video from what appeared to be a beach on Te Afualiku,…
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2022World Cup Delivery
When Argentina won the 2022 football World Cup, the delivery app PedidosYa sent about six million users a push notification that looked like any…
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2022A British Original
Launched in October 2022 as British Airways' first work with Uncommon Creative Studio, it took travel's dullest box-ticking question, “What is the…
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2022Plug Inn
Renault wanted to reassure French electric-car buyers that they could charge on long trips, beyond the thin public network.
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2022Runner 321
A race number became a standing place at the start line.
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2021Superb Owl
Five seconds, bought market by market.
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2021Long Live the Prince
On 18 May 2021, fifteen years after Kiyan Prince was stabbed at the gates of his north London school while trying to break up a fight, the former…
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2021Not Just a Cadbury Ad ("Shah Rukh Khan-My-Ad")
India's biggest film star, advertising the shop around the corner by name.
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2021The Breakaway
A prison cycling team that raced the outside world without leaving the prison.
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2021The Unfiltered History Tour
An unofficial guided tour, running inside the British Museum without its permission.
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2020You Can't Stop Us
Ninety seconds of split screen in which 36 pairs of athletes, elite and everyday, from Serena Williams and LeBron James to Colin Kaepernick and…
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2020In Love We Trust
A film of seven minutes and 23 seconds, released online on 30 October 2020 by the Taiwanese real-estate company Sinyi Realty.
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2020Courage Is Beautiful
Close-up portraits of doctors and nurses, faces marked and creased by long shifts inside masks and protective gear, above three words: "Courage is…
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2020Moldy Whopper
Fast-food advertising has always shown burgers at their most glistening; in 2020 Burger King showed its Whopper rotting.
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2020Shutter Ads
When Covid closures left bars dark, Heineken stopped buying conventional billboards and rented the bars instead.
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2020The Bread Exam
Tradition kept many Lebanese women from talking openly about their bodies, which made teaching breast self-examination hard.
2010s
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2019We All Win
Children with limited mobility talk about what gaming gives them and show how they play with the Xbox Adaptive Controller, which Microsoft designed…
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2019Stevenage Challenge
Burger King put its logo on the shirts of Stevenage, a club at the bottom of English football's fourth tier, knowing the kit would be reproduced in…
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2019Swipe Night
An interactive, end-of-the-world series built into the Tinder app.
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2019The Tampon Book
A tax loophole turned into a manifesto.
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2019ThisAbles
Accessibility shipped as a download.
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2019True Name
A product change that did the work of a campaign.
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2018It's a Tide Ad
The cleverest media hack in Super Bowl history.
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2018Dream Crazy
The defining case of brand risk in the social-media era.
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2018adDRESS the Future (Neo-Ex)
Neo-Ex was a 19-piece clothing collection that existed only as 3D files.
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2018Keeping Fortnite Fresh
During Thanksgiving week 2018, Fortnite ran a 'Food Fight' event that split players into Team Burger and Team Pizza.
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2018Nothing Beats a Londoner
A three-minute film in which 258 young Londoners try to outdo one another's sporting feats across Dalston, Peckham and Brixton, with Mo Farah, Harry…
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2018Welcome Home
FKA twigs plays a woman who drags herself home after a draining day, asks Siri on her HomePod for some music, and dances as her cramped apartment…
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Order a Whopper for a penny — at McDonald's.Burger King2018
Whopper Detour
The best use of a competitor's real estate in marketing history.
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2018Follow the Arches
The golden arches, cropped so tightly they turn into road signs.
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2017The Talk
Across several decades, Black parents sit their children down for a conversation that most white families never have to hold: how to carry…
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2017Did You Mean MailChimp?
Mailchimp's first campaign with Droga5 barely said "Mailchimp" at all.
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2017Black Supermarket (Le Marché Interdit)
A supermarket chain that staged its own black market.
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2017The Palau Pledge
An ad that every visitor has to sign.
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2017Trash Isles
A garbage patch that applied to become a country.
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Know the power of women in leadership. SHE makes a difference.State Street Global Advisors2017
Fearless Girl
A piece of advertising with no media buy that became a permanent landmark.
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20166 Pack Band
Launched on 6 January 2016 with 'Hum Hain Happy', a cover of Pharrell Williams's 'Happy', the 6 Pack Band was presented as India's first transgender…
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2016The Next Rembrandt
Unveiled in Amsterdam on 5 April 2016, The Next Rembrandt is a portrait the Dutch master never painted: a man in his thirties in a black hat and…
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2016Meet Graham
A road-safety message you can walk around.
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2016The Swedish Number
A country that picked up the phone.
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2015Justino
Justino guards a mannequin factory by night, so he never meets the colleagues who work by day, until he starts talking to them through the dummies,…
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2015Emoji Ordering
On 20 May 2015 Domino's let American customers order dinner with a single character.
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2015Shoplifters
An online film made entirely from real CCTV footage of shoplifters at Harvey Nichols' Knightsbridge store.
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2015The Greatest Interception Ever
Volvo bought no airtime in the 2015 Super Bowl, so it borrowed its rivals’.
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2015Unskippable
A run of YouTube pre-roll ads that deliver the whole sales message in the five seconds before the skip button appears, then keep rolling.
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2015McWhopper (an open letter to McDonald's)
Burger King's peace offering to its oldest enemy, made in public.
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2015Shot on iPhone ("World Gallery")
The largest photography exhibition ever mounted — as an ad campaign.
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2015Brewtroleum
A beer that came with its own petrol.
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2015LifePaint
A car maker that built something for the people outside its cars.
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On Black Friday, we're closing. Opt outside.REI2015
#OptOutside
The anti-promotion: on Black Friday 2015, the biggest shopping day of the year, outdoor retailer REI closed all 143 stores, paid its 12,000…
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2014Monty the Penguin
The peak of the modern Christmas-ad genre John Lewis invented.
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2014I Will What I Want (Gisele Bündchen)
When Under Armour signed supermodel Gisele Bündchen, plenty of people online said she was no athlete, and Droga5 made those comments the ad.
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2014#LikeAGirl
A casting session as social experiment.
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2014GAYTMs
For the 2014 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, its principal partner ANZ turned ten of its cash machines on Sydney's busiest streets into GAYTMs,…
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2013Sound of Honda / Ayrton Senna 1989
In qualifying for the 1989 Japanese Grand Prix, Ayrton Senna set the fastest lap yet seen at Suzuka, and his McLaren Honda MP4/5 recorded it as…
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2013The Scarecrow
An animated short and an iPhone and iPad game launched together in September 2013.
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2013Real Beauty Sketches
A social experiment as advertising: a forensic sketch artist draws women twice, sight unseen — once from their own self-description, once from a…
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2013The Epic Split
A B2B truck feature — dynamic steering — demonstrated by Jean-Claude Van Damme doing the splits between two reversing trucks at golden hour, in one…
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2013Magic of Flying (#lookup)
A billboard that looked up.
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2013People for Smarter Cities
Posters that do a job.
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2013Immortal Fans
A football club that asked its supporters to keep cheering after death.
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2013Sorry, I Spent It On Myself
For Christmas 2013 the luxury department store Harvey Nichols put a real range of deliberately cheap presents on sale: the Sorry, I Spent It On…
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2012Meet the Superhumans
The film that changed how disability is shown on screen.
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2012Daily Twist
To mark Oreo’s 100th birthday, Kraft Foods and its agencies published one new image a day for 100 days from late June 2012, each recasting the…
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2012Project Re: Brief — 'Hilltop' Re-imagined for Coca-Cola
The Coca-Cola strand of Project Re: Brief, a Google experiment unveiled at SXSW in March 2012 in which the creators of four classic 1960s and 70s…
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2012The Beauty Inside
A romance whose leading man was partly played by the audience.
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2012Dumb Ways to Die
A rail-safety message delivered as an earworm about adorable beans dying horribly.
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Coke HandsCoca-Cola2012
Coke Hands
The poster is Coca-Cola's signature white ribbon, redrawn on a field of red as two arms meeting in the middle, one hand passing a bottle of Coke to…
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2012The Invisible Drive
A car that seemed to vanish in traffic.
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2011Back to the Start
A farmer's family pig farm grows, step by step, into an industrial animal factory of cramped pens and hormone-pumped livestock, until a crisis of…
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2011The Bear (L'Ours)
For most of the film, Paul Bearman is a tantrum-prone Hollywood director shooting a gothic epic; the twist is that he is a bearskin rug shaped by…
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Curators of Sweden (@sweden)VisitSweden and the Swedish Institute2011
Curators of Sweden (@sweden)
A country handed its official Twitter account to a different citizen every week.
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Heaven and HellSamsonite2011
Heaven and Hell
One long frieze, rendered like a classical stone relief, tells two stories at once.
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2011Unhate
World leaders kissing their adversaries: Barack Obama and Hugo Chávez, Mahmoud Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahu, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy,…
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2011Break Up
Australians tend to see their four big banks as one cosy club, so when National Australia Bank cut fees and paid rivals' exit fees for switching…
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2011Subway Virtual Store
The supermarket that came to the commuters.
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2010Write the Future
The biggest canvas sports advertising has attempted: a three-minute epic in which a single touch — Rooney's loose pass, Ronaldo's free kick —…
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2010The Wilderness Downtown
A music video that could only exist in a browser.
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2010The Man Your Man Could Smell Like
A single unbroken-looking take that rebuilt a dated brand in 30 seconds.
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Be stupid.Diesel2010
Be Stupid
A fashion brand that told its customers to stop being sensible.
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2010Music. See What It's Made Of.
From a distance the ads are portraits of Bono, Eminem, Amy Winehouse, Britney Spears and Marilyn Manson.
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Shop Small.American Express2010
Small Business Saturday
A brand that added a day to the calendar.
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2010The American Takeover
In October 2010 Rom, a chocolate bar sold in Romania since 1964 and always wrapped in the national flag, appeared on shelves in a Stars and Stripes…
2000s
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2009Carousel
A cops-and-robbers shootout frozen in a single instant, explored in one continuous tracking shot that runs two minutes and 19 seconds and loops back…
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2009Chalkbot
Fans at the Tour de France have long painted messages on the road for the riders.
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2009The Fun Theory ("Piano Stairs")
Volkswagen Sweden turned the stairs at Stockholm's Odenplan subway station into working piano keys, filmed commuters abandoning the escalator, and…
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2009The Trillion Dollar Campaign
Zimbabwe's hyperinflation had made its banknotes worth less than the paper they were printed on, so TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris printed the ads on the money.
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Kitto, sakura saku yo.Kit Kat (Nestlé Japan)2009
Kit Kat Mail
A chocolate bar that became a postcard.
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2009Teletransporter
In late 2009 Andes, the leading beer in Mendoza, Argentina, installed soundproof booths in local bars for men whose girlfriends phoned while they…
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Island caretaker wanted. The best job in the world.Tourism Queensland2009
The Best Job in the World
A tourism campaign disguised as a job listing.
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2008eco:Drive
Rather than advertise fuel economy, Fiat and AKQA built a tool that taught people to use less fuel.
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2007Believe ("Diorama")
No gameplay, no graphics, no product shots.
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2007Gorilla
Ninety seconds of a gorilla waiting, then drumming the fill of Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" — no chocolate on screen until the end card.
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UniqlockUniqlo2007
Uniqlock
A clock that doubled as a fashion show.
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2007Why So Serious? (The Dark Knight alternate reality game)
Fifteen months before The Dark Knight reached cinemas, Warner Bros. and 42 Entertainment started letting fans dig the film out for themselves.
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2007No Money, but Love (Yubari Fusai)
Yubari, a former coal-mining city in Hokkaido, had gone broke with around $353 million of debt when Beacon Communications offered it a cheerfully…
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2006Still Free (Air Force One)
A grainy two-minute video that surfaced online in April 2006 appeared to show hooded figures climbing the fence at Andrews Air Force Base at night,…
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2006Evolution
The film that made the ad industry take the internet seriously.
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2006Bonded by Blood
Every year adidas issued a commemorative All Blacks team poster.
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2005noitulovE
Three drinkers raise their pints — and time reverses.
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ImagineLEGO2005
Imagine (Periscope)
Two bricks and one word.
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2004Grrr ("Hate Something, Change Something")
A diesel-engine ad built on hate.
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2003ecotonoha
A website on which a single virtual tree grew one leaf at a time.
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Small but tough. Polo.Volkswagen2003
Cops
A squad of American cops is pinned down in a street shoot-out, and every one of them has picked the same cover: not their own patrol car but a…
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2002Lamp
A woman unplugs her old red desk lamp and leaves it on the curb.
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Beach, Bar, PoolClub 18-302002
Beach, Bar, Pool
Three crowded, sun-drenched holiday scenes, on a beach, at a bar and around a pool, look like ordinary package-tour snapshots.
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PiercingOslo Piercing Studio2001
Piercing
A small Oslo piercing studio with almost no budget won the first Outdoor Grand Prix ever awarded at Cannes.
1990s
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1999Whassup?
Proof that advertising can borrow culture honestly instead of manufacturing it.
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1992Hungry? (Moa / Synthetoceras)
Starving cavemen chase dinner across a prehistoric plain, first a towering moa bird, then a Synthetoceras that wears the tribe out by popping up…
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1990Le Lion (La Lionne)
A woman and a lion meet nose to nose on an African hilltop, both desperate for the same bottle of Perrier, and she wins it with a cry so primal it…
1980s
About Cannes Grand Prix Winners
The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity awards a Grand Prix, its top prize, in each of its categories, from Film and Print to Outdoor, PR, Digital and Creative Effectiveness. This collection gathers every Grand Prix winner in the directory.
Grands Prix are decided by international juries of senior creative people, so these winners show what the industry itself considers the best work of its year. The sources on each entry confirm the award.