Date: 31 Jul 2009 Comments: 0

The advertising campaign that helped Barack Obama to win the US presidential election has received recognition 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 travel to Florida and persuade their grandparents to vote Obama, there was also an interactive website as part of the campaign.

The integrated prize was also given to the Obama campaign, for its effective use of three or more different medias combining to deliver a powerful message. It got recognition as a creative use of television, new media, online and grass roots door-to-door campaigning.

The film category also included aspects of Obamas election campaign, with creator of Budweisers classic Wassup ads, Charles Stone III, being awarded a special jury commendation for his new version of the ad. The new version saw the original characters who were once happy and chilled out going through tough times after eight years under 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 countrys 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 successful campaigns included the “dance” ad for T-Mobile with a whole crowd dancing together in Liverpool Street station, and an interactive ad for a Philips TV featuring a bank robbery frozen in time.