Change And The Radio Will Never Be The Same

Michael Hedges June 22, 2018 Follow on Twitter

Difficult assignments have never cowed the advertising people. There is always a solution, sometimes requiring conceptual, even cosmic, shifts. We love what they do with words, images and the means of displaying it all. After all, they invented the slogan “new and improved.”

All of this was manifest at the Cannes Lions 65th International Festival of Creativity, hereinafter referred to as the Cannes Lions Ad Fest. This year’s event takes particular significance as the Cannes Lions award categories, more or less in place for a generation, have been changed, expanded, contracted, modified and scrambled. It’s all about being new and improved.

The Radio Lions award category now includes audio, generally anything that can be heard. “We need to start looking at audio as ‘audio’,” said Cannes Lions Radio and Audio jury president Jo McCrostie, quoted by AdWeek (June 19). “Radio has completely changed. Sound is appearing everywhere. As creatives, you can put this anywhere.”

The 2018 Cannes Lions Radio and Audio Grand Prix was awarded to Ogilvy Cape Town for AB-Inbev Africa’s Carling Black Label beer. A choir of African women sing in the radio spot, "Soccer Song for Change.” Agency creatives put new words to South Africa’s national football anthem based on a popular traditional Zulu struggle song. The message about domestic violence, known to spike after football matches, couldn’t be clearer. Carling Black Label sponsors two South African football teams. The spot was produced by Johannesburg production house Audio Militia.

“Our courageous clients showed us the way,” said Ogilvy & Mather worldwide chief creative officer Tham Khai Meng in a statement. “Their fight is our fight. Together, we worked as a team and did what we had to do to drive for business impact and to change culture.”

Difficult issues very often make for award winning radio and, now, audio treatments. Stockholm agency Akestam Holst and production house Flickorna Larsson produced “A Voice For Change” for LGBTQ rights advocacy EuroPride 2018. The audio, notably in soft voice, depicts a transgender person’s change from female to male.

Streaming audio being a major component of the new media world, significant for advertising people, the Cannes Lions Radio and Audio jury honored DDB Berlin and Reporters Without Borders Germany for the “Uncensored Playlist” campaign. Featured were articles written by journalists from countries under strict censorship transformed into lyrics for pop songs. They were uploaded to Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer.

Medical devices, ordinarily, do not raise great possibilities for creative radio (or audio) advertising. UK agency McCann Birmingham won Gold Radio and Audio Lions for an ad package pitching the Dexcom no-needle diabetes testing device. It was the punch-line that won it: "The world is already full of pricks, so we made a glucose monitoring system for diabetics that doesn't have any. The Dexcom D6. No needles. No pricks.”

In another nod to audio rather than broadcast radio, Dublin agency Rothco won a Gold Lion for use of audio technology. The ad - titled “JFK Unsilenced” - utilized artificial intelligence (AI) to recreate the speech US president John F. Kennedy intended to give the day he was assassinated in 1963. It pitched subscriptions to News UK titles The Times and the Sunday Times. Media campaigns for media are often Gold Lions catchers. Grey Columbia and sports radio network Blu Radio won a Gold Lion for creating “The Game That Never Was” in homage to the tragic loss of the Brazilian football team Chapecoense in a airplane crash in Columbia.

US creative agency VML extended their award winning work for Wendy’s, the fast food chain, taking Gold Radio and Audio Lions for audio tracks based on social media interactions with customers. The “World Gone Mad” campaign for Flight Centre Youth and Adventure produced by Johannesburg agency TBWA/Hunt/Lascaris was also Gold Lion winner.

In total there were seven Gold Lions, 21 Silver and 25 Bronze awarded in the Radio and Audio category.

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