New Celebrity Sightings

The advertising campaign that helped Barack Obama to win the US presidential election has been given acclaim and awards at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Awards. Advertising agency Droga5 won the Titanium prize for presenting an idea that is “provocative, challenges assumptions and points to a new direction” for ‘The Great Schlep’ campaign featuring Sarah Silverman intended to boost support for Obama amongst Jewish voters. In addition to a video where Silverman urged young “Jewish grandchildren” to persuade their grandparents living in ‘swing state’ Florida to give Obama their votes, there was also an interactive website as part of the campaign.

The Obama campaign also picked up the integrated prize for its innovative use of three or more different types of media to produce a convincing advertising campaign. It got recognition as a clever use of different media across the board from television, new media and online to grass roots door to door campaigning.

Obama’s election campaign also had a presence in the film category, where Charles Stone III, who created the famous Budweiser ‘Wassup’ ads in 2000, was given a special jury commendation for his 2008 reprisal of the classic ad. The 2008 version showed the formerly happy and chilled out characters and where they had ended up after eight years of George Bush, being posted to Iraq and affected by the Wall Street crash. Unfortunately this ad was not eligible to win a prize in the film category as the rules state that all entries must be commissioned by a commercial client and work towards promoting a corporate identity design, but the judges felt it deserved special recognition for being such a powerful political statement.

Another big winner was newspaper The Zimbabwean, for their campaign which used the country’s almost worthless banknotes on billboards, giving a whole new meaning to sign printing and scooping gold awards in both the Titanium and integrated categories. Other winners included T-Mobile’s “dance” ad with a whole crowd dancing together in Liverpool Street station, and a paused bank robbery scene advertising a Philips TV in a unique interactive way.