Creative Criminals

The Turkish bank “Finansbank” is promoting their auto insurance with this print advertisement. It shows a billboard seen from the perspective of an upturned car. “Accident” is an award winning ad, it won a Bronze Press Lion at Cannes, and a Silver Drum in Portoroz, Slovenia this month.

This ad premiered on Australian television on 7 August 2005, so it’s pretty old. But a friend of mine showed it to me this week, and I never saw it before. After some research I found out it’s one of the most expensive Tv spots ever made. Take a look at the camera shots, these are simply amazing! And it’s also really funny. The combination of these 2 factors probably explains why they won more than 30 awards globally.

This ad won a gold lion in Cannes, but I can’t quite understand why.

Don’t get me wrong, the concept is great, but the art director won an award for this one, and that’s just the only thing I don’t like in this ad. It’s just bad retouching, the people flying don’t fit in the picture.

Too bad I guess, it could make the ad even better…

This campaign was made for Greenpeace to save the oceans and everything that lives in it. These sea animals are all made out of pencils. The slogan reads: “Every signature helps save our seas.” It was awarded a Silver Lion at Cannes this year.

Just like I’ve posted yesterday, today is another great usage of technology in a billboard.
This campaign won a “Bronze Cannes Lions Media” award.
Equiped with motion detectors and flashes, this billboard makes bypassers feel like superstars. When you walk the red carpet you feel like being photographed, the red carpet leads directly to the Nikon store.

Duval Guillaume Antwerp seduced the Cannes jury again. This year they won a bronze Lion with the Komatsu direct mailing campaign.
Komatsu is a brand of heavy construction machines, in Belgium they don’t have a lot of clients. With this direct mailing action they wanted to get 5 new big key clients for Komatsu. They dropped the envelope in the mailbox of these 5 companies, but not in an ordinary way. They used a big Komatsu machine to do this. Talking about extreme precision?

Komatsu | Extreme precision from Duval Guillaume on Vimeo.

Remember the campaign that Rindert posted of ‘The Zimbabwean‘ a couple of months ago?
This campaign was created for The Zimbabwean, a newspaper that is runned by exiled Zimbabwean journalists and is sold in the UK, South Africa and Zimbabwe.



Back then, (and now also) the Zimbabwean money was worthless because of Mugabe, the president.
TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris, the agency, used worthless high denomination Zimbabwe currency as the materials in billboards, murals, posters and flyers.
This was a protest to the policy of Robert Mugabe, because it had an negative impact to the country’s economy.

This campaign won the ‘Grand Prix award‘ for the Outdoor category..

Red Cross Portugal (Cruz Vermelha) opened up a temporary store in 2008 before Christmas. The store sold ‘hope‘, the product you can feel but not see, touch, wear or hear, the perfect gift alternative for Christmas. They opened the shop in the most popular shopping mall in Lisbon, where the fund raising begun.

The news spread fast and all over the world. Hope was a popular product bought by many people..
The campaign, by Leo Burnett, Lisbon won six awards at Cannes Lions including a Gold Direct Lion.

Doritos brought during Halloween two flavors ‘back from the dead’. This line extension couldn’t go unnoticed so logically they created a campaign to promote these 2 new flavours..
Because the campaign started out in Halloween, the creators decided to involve some horror. On the website of Hotel 626 people were invited to enter the hotel online, were they could play a sort of ‘escape-game’.
From the moment they entered online they were trapped and the only way out was through scary challenges using their mobile phone, microphone and webcam.
Spicy detail: the website is only ‘open’ from 6pm till 6am, so the creators wanted the people to play in the dark.. (Unless you put on your light..)



This website is more than just a escape-game. It’s an interactive game, where you get several calls on your cell phone with directions on how to get out. Your webcam also takes a snapshot from the gamer while playing, and later on you’ll find your that picture in the game.

This campaign won several awards:
Bronze at the Andy Awards 2009, bronze at the CLIO Awards 2009, Gold Pencil at One Show Interactive 2009, and several others. Probably they’ve got a good shot to win something at Cannes Lions too.

To see the youtube-trailer for Hotel 626,

Today the 56th edition of Cannes Lions started and will last untill the 27th of June. It is the biggest advertising event in the world, where the best commercials are awarded by a jury that consists of member from the best advertising agencies.


Cannes Lions is divided into eleven categories:
Films, Press, Outdoor, Lions Direct, Media Lions, Cyber Lions, Radio Lions, Promo Lions, Titanium & Integrated Lions, Design Promotion and PR Lions (new since this year)



Despite the popularity of this prestige contest, the entries descended with 20% this year due to the economic crisis.
To give you an idea, last year 28.284 entries were sent in, this year only 22.652..

But less quantity doesn’t mean less quality..
Some made a list of the favourites and yes, in the 3 months Creative Criminals is online, several of our ‘chosen ones’ are potential award winners.

Here are some examples:
Everybody is against Everybody
The T-Mobile Dance
Get it on
Sprint: Useless facts
Philips Carousel

Here’s another funny entry..
Ever busted your partner cheating on you, by sniffing somebody else?
No? Well this man does..