CREATIVE Artists Agency LA is winner of the Grand Prix in both the Film and Branded Content categories for ‘Cultivate/Back to the Start’, a thought-provoking campaign for fast food firm Chipotle. In winning both awards, it received the emphatic support of two separate juries: Film, headed by Ogilvy & Mather worldwide chief creative office Tham Khai Meng, and Branded Content, headed by Big Fuel founder and chief creative officer Avi Savar.

The film at the heart of the campaign is an extraordinary piece of stop-frame animation produced by Nexus London. 140 seconds in length, it tells the story of a farmer who turns his back on industrial-scale factory farming for a sustainable model. Accompanied by Willie Nelson’s moving rendition of Coldplay’s The Scientist, the film reflects the way Chipotle has built a profitable business using sustainably raised meat.

Explaining the creative impact of the film, CAA Marketing’s Jesse Coulter cites three elements: the bold and provocative sustainability message, the Willie Nelson soundtrack and superb direction by Johnny Kelly. In addition, the decision to make the song available via iTunes proved effective. The song went to number one on the iTunes Country chart with proceeds going to the Chipotle Cultivate Foundation.

While the visual impact of the film is eye-catching, no less significant is the way CAA built massive support for the campaign. Explaining its strategy to the Jury, CAA said: “The film launched on YouTube with no paid media support. The launch was supported with an earned media plan and the social media assets of Chipotle, Willie Nelson and Coldplay to 21 million Facebook fans. Next, the campaign added paid digital while running on theatrical screens across the US. Finally, the campaign took Chipotle into TV advertising. Back To The Start ran in its entirety, during the 54th Annual Grammy Awards to an audience of over 40 million viewers.”
THE WINNER of the Cannes Lions Titanium Grand Prix for 2012 is Nike+ Fuelband, a concept created for Nike by agency R/GA New York.

The Nike+ Fuelband, which has already won the Cannes Lions Cyber Grand Prix this week, was selected by a jury headed by Rob Reilly, worldwide chief creative officer of agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky.

Speaking to the Cannes Lions Daily, Bob Greenburg, chairman and CEO of R/GA, said: “We spent two years developing the Fuelband to measure a person’s daily activity and sync it up with a motivational web and mobile experience. This is the first physical product we have produced.”

The significance of the Fuelband is that it gives consumers a reason to interact with Nike, thus deepening brand experience, Greenberg said.

The Integrated category, which is for state-of-the-art integrated campaign entries, has the same jury as the Titanium Award. At press time, the jury had no plans to award an Integrated Grand Prix but it did award a Gold Lion to Nike+ Fuelband. There were 517 entries from 69 countries for the Titanium and Integrated categories.

The winner of the 2012 Cannes Lions Film Craft Grand Prix is The Bear, a film for French PayTV broadcaster Canal+ by agency BETC Paris. Produced for BETC by Soixante Quinze Paris, The Bear is a quirky campaign told through the eyes of a bearskin rug. Having spent so much time on the floor watching movies on television, the bear decides that he is better equipped than most to get behind the camera and make a film. The film starts out with a dramatic medieval sequence in which a warrior woman slices her way through a horde of male opponents. It then turns out that the scene is a movie being shot by the bear, who talks us through his love of all aspects of film craft and production.

The Bear was selected by a film craft jury headed by Espen Horn, executive producer at Motion Blur. It beat off 1720 other entries to win the top prize. In the two years since Film Craft launched, total entries are up from 1110

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