Right Talent Cannes Lions

This June, Talon and Grand Visual are supporting the #RightTalent initiative at Cannes.  #RightTalent is sending 11 young people to attend the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity as part of its mission to call for more diversity, equity and inclusion at the annual gathering. 

#RightTalent is led by Digilearning, an official partner of Cannes Lions’ Equity, Representation and Accessibility programme. 

Digilearning is a charity that helps young people find fulfilling careers in the digital and creative industries. They are working with four other organisations on the #RightTalent scheme. They are: The Amos Bursary, Mobo Trust/Mobolise, the Rio Ferdinand Foundation and The Marketing Academy Foundation. 

#RightTalent is calling on the industry to “walk to talk” when it comes to diversity by providing mentors, pathways to job roles such as work experience and offering jobs to young talent from under-represented backgrounds. 

Talon and Grand Visual have pledged our support alongside companies including Accenture and VaynerMedia. 

The 11 candidates chosen to attend Cannes Lions will take part in a leadership acceleration programme. At the festival itself, the young talent will meet senior leaders through attending panels, mentoring sessions and roundtables featuring organisations that are supporting #RightTalent. 

Other training includes an online bootcamp before the festival that provides tips and advice on confidence, networking and what to expect at Cannes Lions.

Read The Media Leader to find out more. 

Our very own CCO, Dan Dawson and his Behind the Billboard co-host Hugh Todd discuss the best OOH work over the last year and which ones they believe could be Cannes Contenders including British Airways, McDonald’s, Warner Bros; Wonka and many more!

See the full article on Shots.net here!

Google Multi App Old Street digital OOH
Welcome to our DOOH News for August 2019. This month, we’ve been busy working hard on a brand new campaign for Google, exploring new technology for augmented & mixed reality and much more. Enjoy!
This month… Google owned British Summertime!

Google Multi App EC1

Google extended its “Make the Most of Summer” campaign with a responsive, data-driven digital OOH push, demonstrating how Google is there to help you enjoy the Summer.

In other news…

Want to find out how some of the world’s biggest entertainment brands are using digital OOH to bring their shows to life?

Entertainment Digital OOH

Our Creative Technologist shares a behind-the-scenes look at Mo-Sy’s StarTracker technology for Augmented & Mixed Reality.

Technology for Augmented and Mixed Reality

Here’s our latest showreel, showcasing the creative possibilities of dynamic for digital OOH. Enjoy!

Want to know what campaigns made our Top 5 Dynamic Digital OOH Campaigns?

Google Outside Dynamic DIgital OOH

It was amazing to see our key digital OOH moments highlighted in this piece from Campaign Mag.

Pepsi MAX Augmented Reality digital OOH

Our CCO Dan Dawson gave us a backstage view of Outdoor Cannes Lions 2019, plus a look at Digital’s progress within the category.

cannes outdoor lions

Here’s our tips for successfully rolling out global digital OOH campaigns.

Dufry Global DOOH

We hope you’ve enjoyed our DOOH News for August 2019. If you would like to start receiving our monthly DOOH Newsletters in your mailbox, then please sign up here.

cannes outdoor lions 2019

This first appeared in OOH Today on July 10th 2019.

Dan Dawson, Chief Creative Officer at Grand Visual, gives a backstage view of Outdoor Cannes Lions 2019, including insight into the jury room, the winners, the USA, plus a look at Digital’s progress in the outdoor category and beyond.

Dan Dawson

It was a great privilege to be the UK creative industry representative on this year’s Outdoor Lions jury.  To work alongside fellow crafters, directors, illustrators, art directors, writers and creatives, from Thailand, USA, Canada, Italy, Germany, Chile, Brazil, France and Australia, all previous winners here at Cannes and experts in their field. Some of the most famous advertising work in the world in recent times has gone across our desks… it was an exceptional gig, with exceptional people.

The Judging

The entire process was incredible, inspiring, challenging and arduous in equal measure. Together, we looked at every single one of the 2,389 entries in Outdoor this year. The categories and criteria were studied each time, evaluating entries not just on creative concept, but on craft, rationale and against the high benchmarks set by this category in previous years.

We had animated, constructive and fair discussions about the work we were judging, with everyone was given a voice by our highly effective jury president, John Patroulis, Chief Creative Officer of Grey Worldwide. We were encouraged to have creative and craft-driven discussions around the work which ensured we’d covered every angle and every juror until the voting tablets kicked in.

John promoted more creative discussion before finalizing our shortlisted campaigns, and I think the Lions we awarded were the better for it. The result of that diligence was challenging time-wise, working late into the night searching for the golds, silvers and bronzes. But it ensured we gave all the entries the respect they deserved.

Outdoor Cannes Lions Nike 2019
The Winners

Outdoor is one of the few Lions where the jury can award not one but two Grand Prix if they wish. The thought being that it’s frightfully hard to compare a ‘simple’ billboard to an ambient /immersive /interactive/ special build / technologically driven campaign execution.

However, this year’s sole Outdoor Grand Prix transcended both categories. Created by WK Portland, Nike’s “Dream Crazy” featuring Colin Kaepernick, originated from a tweet by Nike, that went on to become a Billboard for maximum impact. That impact was a thunderclap that pushed all other media to cover the story.

Post-awarding, the jurors were still swapping stories about where they’d first seen or heard about the campaign. For some, they had seen the billboard on social before the social post itself. For others, they’d heard the story on the radio or seen it in the news. For me, that’s the real power of Outdoor. Impact. Audience. Moment. Message. The brand story became real when it went Outdoor.

In fact, I’d go further. The Grand Prix was a ‘Dynamic’ campaign. It used insight and data to decide on where the media was placed. It was placed in reaction to an online audience’s appetite for the message, it was reactive to a moment in time, a culturally sensitive moment in a country where the conversation on the subject was waning. It used this contextually relevant subject to convey Nike’s all-important brand message… To Dream Crazy…

Get ‘Outdoor’ in the USA

The US market was rich in this category as always. With two-thirds of the top awards heading back across to the shelves of US agencies. There were some huge budget campaigns whose activations spanned traditional, digital, and ambient outdoor categories. There was excellent and well-publicized work from Skittles, Dominoes, and Adidas, that had it not been for Nike’s thunderclap would have been fighting it out for the Grand Prix.

Digital Out of Home

In 2018, Cannes’ Outdoor awards program underwent a complete overhaul. I was part of the committee that helped rewrite the Outdoor Lions categories to ensure Digital became more a more ubiquitous part of the program, mimicking what we are actually seeing on the ground.

It’s great to see this has been embraced by the entrants, with both winning entries showcasing their work on DOOH screens around the world as part of the media placements, and as hero shots for their campaigns. I was impressed by both Nike and Adidas’s winning entries, traditional campaigns that used digital to add context and convey the message, proving that digital billboards have become part of the fabric of OOH.

In fact, I saw some great DOOH work at Cannes in alternative award categories. Notable examples included Volvo’s “Competitors’ Sale”, a DOOH push which used contextualized creative to help motorists sell their existing vehicles, to buy a Volvo XC60, genius. Netflix’s Censors Cut, used DOOH in Thailand in response to market and cultural conditions around content censorship, and XBOX’s “Football Decoded” did well at the festival – dynamic, data-driven, and contextually relevant. Outdoor at it’s very best, but for some reason, this work did not make it into the Outdoor category.

cannes outdoor lions

The Upshot

A really impactful billboard or poster is understood in a matter of seconds, milliseconds even – heck if it’s not then it’s not doing its job. The judging process is similar – but the static creative served straight-up. For an ambient entry, setting the scene, showcasing the activation, understanding the concept and how it was received can take more time. The greater the immersion, the greater the need for a jury to understand its impact.

It’s an interesting task and it’s difficult. Rather than just submitting your poster or billboard, ambient entries need to convey their story in the form of a ‘case study film’, with more time given to process. The quality and craft of the case study film is therefore paramount, it can make or break your quest for a Lion.

Although this year’s Outdoor Grand Prix was awarded in the traditional billboard and poster category, and the work entered into digital specific categories was a little underwhelming, I don’t think this is a fair reflection of the current creative climate. Great work is taking place across the global digital OOH landscape. It’s just that those standout examples did not make it into this year’s Outdoor Lions.

So I reiterate here – Outdoor Cannes Lions has embraced Digital in the category awards, and so should you – by submitting your best projects in 2020. Just be sure you communicate the story to the jury with the same level of creativity and craft you applied to the campaign itself. Go watch ANZ’s ‘Signs of Love’ case study video and learn how to give your entry the best chance of winning.

There is a global shift taking place…. Traditional Outdoor is now Out-of-Home, a connected, multi-platform, cross-discipline creative arena. One that is immersive, ambient, dynamic, scalable and interactive. It’s more than ‘just a billboard’ and we’ll know it’s arrived when the largest global festival of creativity calls it so…. ‘Out-of-Home Lions 2020’ anyone?

Cannes Lions
The week before Cannes your inbox lights up, brimming with emails from long-lost clients, agency friends and Cannes comrades asking if you’re going to the Cote d’Azur next week. Half the industry is buzzing in anticipation, the other half are planning their week of World Cup viewing. For me this year, Cannes was a chance to join my fellow founding members of the Digital Future Council as we strategise over the future of our respective creative and media worlds. To catch up with a number of industry partners, clients, agencies and, well, let’s face it… mates. It’s not all work.

The Digital Future Council had a villa a short walk from the Croisette and the founding members had sessions on Monday and Tuesday. Sessions centred on Blockchain technology and how it may affect the creative and media worlds. Much more to come on this (watch this space). The event was well attended and prompted a lively debate about technology and the future. I spoke with people from varying industries all tasked with understanding new tech roles for their business. It is clear the tech players are beginning to own Cannes. Facebook, Snap, Twitter, Google, Pinterest, Spotify all have prominent spots along La Croisette beachfront. Plenty more had their yachts moored up for intimate chats with the right person. But it’s clear the ad tech world is viewing Cannes with big cow eyes. Rubicon, Trade Desk and MediaMath booked out some nice spaces to party into the night, while the Media Agencies take their usual spots at large hotels. It definitely feels like the tech players and publishers are splashing the cash to get in on the action.

Despite Lion’s creative heritage and emphasis on being creative, this year’s festival was dominated by technology. Augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), blockchain, Artificial Intelligence and printing technology, and how these technological advancements are about to change the face of the creative and media worlds. With well publicised decreased agency presence, the void was filled by digital firms shouting about their tech-based offerings. As well as entertaining the creative community nightly with live music, beaches and of course cocktails, Minuty and Lager beer on tap (they know us so well.) So much entertainment was on offer that chats at each beach party invariably moved quickly on to ’where we going next?’ or ’did you see The Killers last night?’ or ’are you going to watch Duran Duran later?’ (incidentally overheard on the Croisette from a young Lion ’I think my mum saw Duran Duran once’ – man I feel old.)

So are the awards a sideshow to all of this? I don’t think so. The two mutually exist. While there were several peers I spoke to that by Thursday hadn’t even picked up their delegate pass, there were quite a few discussions about shortlists and awards from that night or the next. I was really pleased to see the hard work I put in with the Cannes Lions Outdoor team come to life on the awards side of things. For too long I’ve written about how the categorisation of Outdoor has almost excluded Digital. It’s now fully integrated into the Outdoor category, though judging by the shortlists and entries it’ll take a few years to bed in on both agency and judging sides. Don’t get me wrong, there were some very worthy winners, but there were also again some technically suspect entries with poor categorisations.

In amongst everything were some real flashes of brilliance, and a real stand out I thought, was McCann London’s, XBOX Dynamic Campaign Outdoor win. A very smart and dynamic way to promote a product they were not allowed to talk about. Outside of that, it was great to see our partner Adam and Eve do well at Lions, especially for the great Project 84 campaign, but also in reclaiming the coveted agency of the year award.

Tech tech tech. This platform. The whole thing is pointless without effective creative, storytelling and crafting. So the question is: With all this technology, from sponsors, platforms, publishers, media owners, tech providers and future thinkers are we ruining the ’festival of creativity’?

I cannot see it changing anytime soon. Creative and Media are a huge business. And Tech knows it. Tech is rich. Tech is powerful. Tech can woo your client on the yacht while you’re watching The Killers.

We are stood at the very beginning of a transformation of the media and creative worlds in terms of digitisation and technologification. Predictive analytics and artificial intelligence are set to change the way we buy, distribute and attribute campaign work at scale. Smarter integrated campaigns, with better results for clients. Transparent in their process through the implementation of blockchain technology throughout the entire campaign. There is still a race to be the first. I feel there should be more pressure on collectively being ’the best’ as industries, working collaboratively to build a brighter technological future so that smarter creative can make the whole thing work.

Daniel Dawson, CCTO Grand Visual

Twitter #CannesCan DOOH
By Dan Dawson, first published on ExchangeWire on 27th Feb 2018

Some great news to report following my annual rant about the state of the Cannes Lions Outdoor Awards and, more specifically, their ‘Digital Outdoor’ category. It turns out that this time the festival organisers were listening. Days later I was asked to discuss my views directly with their team and shortly after this I was invited to join their Outdoor Lions taskforce with the aim of helping to reform the category.

Having provided creative services for digital OOH for over 15 years, I was passionate to see the world’s biggest advertising festival get up to speed on this fast-growth medium and its burgeoning creative potential, something that was not captured or truly reflected by their current awards programme. One major bone of contention for me was the prevailing structure of Outdoor Cannes Lions and the overriding preference given to traditional Outdoor formats.

Considering that digital is revolutionising the OOH marketplace, and is set to top 50% of total outdoor media spend in the UK this year, with many more markets closely following suit, it struck me as odd that the medium remained in the shadows of traditional outdoor at an event which prized itself in recognising latest trends, originality, and creative innovation. Despite the prevailing trend towards digitisation, digital outdoor remained a subcategory to the main event, which was traditional outdoor.

But I am happy to say that the taskforce proved to be hugely progressive. Open, honest, and insightful discussions were had, and changes were implemented. Advertisers and media agencies don’t see Digital Outdoor as a separate entity to Outdoor – it’s all on the same Media Plan. Plus, to the millennials working in creative agencies the world over, it’s just all Outdoor, and of course it’s digital, connected, dynamic, and tactical.

So, it is great to see that the finalised categories for the 2018 Outdoor awards do a much better job of representing the overall medium, and digital as being a big part of that. Now you can enter EITHER traditional or digital versions of your campaign across most of the Outdoor categories. A huge result.

Other game changers have been refinements made to the category criteria and definitions for Out of Home spaces and formats, which are now more representative of the medium today. Meanwhile, what was once known as ‘Digital Outdoor’ is now ‘Digital Screens’ – with subcategories that are clearly defined between linear, dynamic, and interactive campaigns – again, far more in tune with the medium today. These changes will help to reflect Digital Outdoor’s true power as a connected, responsive, and scalable medium.

The other big change (which we hope to see come through in the judging), is that ‘Outdoor Innovation’ which replaces ‘Use of Outdoor’, will be the new official home for those one-off specials, PR stunts, and out-of-the-ordinary campaigns that have swamped the regular categories in past years. This has been a bug bear for me, the blatant over representation of special builds and PR launches that have dominated the league tables. Of course, OOH PR stunts have their place, but this is not the ‘bread and butter’ work for a medium that offers up dynamic, tactical, and contextual campaigns with huge reach.

The last remaining challenge, as I see it, is down to the organisers, judges, and jury presidents. It is vital that these changes are upheld by the rigorous policing of submissions to ensure that category criteria are met, and rules are enforced. I can’t stress this point enough. We’ve seen it time and again, since Digital Outdoor was first introduced to the programme back in 2009, campaigns that were shortlisted, and even awarded, were not digital or outdoor in the way that we know it. Organisers will need to tighten up on category rules and ensure that judges are on board with agreed definitions of what Digital Outdoor is.

Whether this new rigour can be carried through the judging process is yet to be seen. But the changes to Outdoor coming into effect this year, along with the Six Lion limit, and the separation of judging charity against brand work, means we could be in for a very different June in the South of France.

So, all things said, 2018 is shaping up to be a good one for digital OOH creativity. Digital OOH, as a whole, is in rude health. The technology stack that media owners, agencies, and specialists have invested so heavily in is amazing. Brands and their agencies are thinking more strategically about the medium than ever before, and now we have a renewed vigour coming from the world’s biggest festival of creativity which will hopefully see this new body of work coming through. 2018 is going to be one hell of a ride. Who knows, maybe next year the Cannes Lions Officialdom will rename the programme ‘OOH Lions’ then my work here will be done!

Grand Visual’s June Winning Streak

June was a busy awards month for Grand Visual with wins across multiple categories at Cannes Lions, Outdoor Media Awards and the Creative Tech Awards. A total of ten awards across the board with Waitrose Spring and Age UK the most successful campaigns overall for the month.

Waitrose Spring was the standout winner at the Outdoor Media Awards, taking home The Innovation Award, and both the Grand Prix and People’s Choice. Additionally, it also collected a Bronze Media Lion at the Cannes Lions Festival. The campaign was an out of home media first, with live streamed content filmed at the brand’s dairy and free range hen farms, and distributed to digital screens in 9 cities across the UK.

Another big winner for June was Age UK, whose No One Should Have No One campaign scooped up a Gold and Silver Media Lion at Cannes Lions, and the Data Award at the OMAs. It was created to raise awareness by the charity about the plight of loneliness amongst older people, in particular over the festive period. The nationwide digital OOH campaign was a great example of smart linear delivering effective creative.

Our final winner at the OMAs was for start-up brand Tailster, which came away with the SME award. Working with Talon, Tailster targeted audiences at rail and tube stations close to green parks and spaces in London, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Using a tactical approach to OOH, they were able to successfully boost their brand awareness, more than doubling their online visits in London and Scotland.

Finally, at Campaign’s Creative Tech Awards Grand Visual received a Silver for Integrated Campaign of the year for UKTV Play and a Silver for International Technology Powered Campaign of the Year for Google Play, both delivered via OpenLoop.

Overall it was a very successful month for Grand Visual and our partners, and great to be recognised for our work.

Cannes Lions

Another year of sunshine, creativity and rosé at the biggest advertising festival on earth. Let’s just start by saying I love Cannes. As well as the obligatory networking, I like to use it to do some research, to stand back and take stock of the amazing work taking place the world over.

It is always with great anticipation that I sit down with my café au lait to review the shortlist in what I guess would traditionally be our ‘home’ category – E03 ‘Use of Digital Outdoor’. It’s a category rich in creative and technical innovation, delivered on one of the fastest growing mediums in the world. A medium that has spent billions of dollars reinventing itself from a traditional media offering to a digital one that now demands its own sub category at Cannes.

So there was I, sipping my [now cold] morning coffee, pouring over the shortlisted entrants in Outdoor Lions, watching the campaign films and trying to savour the moment. And then it hit me. The disappointment. The furrowed brow.

It’s not just because our Google Programmatic and Child Rescue Alert campaigns didn’t make the cut. There were a number of campaigns using data as the catalyst for storytelling. McDonald’s use of real-time snowfall data synchronised to the ratio of cream which targeted skiers in Canada, Bond’s billboard The Boys which adapted to temperature cues in a humorous campaign for the underwear brand. However, each of these campaigns was a special build, adapted billboard or a one-off stunt in one location – all great ideas, but nothing that ran on existing infrastructure at scale.

And then there was Toyota’s Land Cruiser Emergency Network. I’m not suggesting it’s not a good concept, for a worthwhile cause, but best ‘Use of Digital Outdoor’ it surely is not. It is disappointing that a campaign can be entered into a category that it does not meet the submission criteria for, but even more disappointing when the judges fail to recognise the same criteria and go on to shortlist such work. Digital Outdoor has in fact been a category plagued by campaigns that do not fit category criteria since its introduction in 2009. Organisers will need to tighten up on category rules and ensure that judges are on board with agreed definitions of what Digital Outdoor is going forward.

That aside, the rest of the shortlisted work was of a very high standard with some interesting use of technology including voice activation for ESPN, contactless payments for the Melanoma Institute, and thermal-imaging for GlaxoSmithKline’s Theraflu in Poland. Bronzes for Saatchis Poland and Forsman and Bodenfors Gothenburg were worthy winners as was Clemenger BBDO Melbourne taking home a silver lion for its weather activated giant digital billboard. Each campaign demonstrated good use of technology and creativity working in synergy in the DOOH space to provide useful and contextualised information that is tailored to the audience mindset.

Also under Outdoor Lions are categories for all digital ‘out-of-home’ work including all digital screens and ambient use of digital. My favourite winner here was in C03 – from Jung von Matt, The Great Escape – which also took home awards for best use of screens at Media Lions. The execution is an entertaining and rewarding interaction with a live billboard that both surprised and delighted passers-by.

Overall, the UK had a fairly poor showing in the ‘Screens, Digital Billboards or Digital Outdoor’ categories across Media, Outdoor and Cyber Lions this year. This seems odd given our status in the market as an innovator and is not reflective of the rich work that has been done here in the UK in the last 12 months.

So as I consider the state of the DOOH space creatively it seems that the problem is not with the creative that’s being delivered to DOOH – the last 12 months has seen some excellent work globally. I think the problem is that it’s either not been submitted to Lions, or it’s being wrongly judged against submissions that are not meeting category criteria correctly. The awarding body’s understanding and consensus of what ‘digital outdoor’ is, needs to be fleshed out and better understood for 2017.

Twitter #CannesCan DOOH

Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, where all the big names from the advertising world congregate to debate, drink and mingle, is the setting for a new public service from Grand Visual and Clear Channel. #CannesScan, a Twitter enabled DOOH campaign, summarises the mood, chit-chat and hangovers on the Croisette. All in the world’s first truly global language – emojis.

18th-25th June, Cannes, France: #CannesScan, is a live Twitter poll of the emojis being used in reference to all things #CannesLions during the world’s most important advertising event. The trending emoji will be published regularly through each day on Le Grand Screen, a giant 16-metre-long digital billboard above The Grand Hotel.

Attending Cannes Lions is such a tough gig. Festival attendees may be too busy, too tired, too hungover or too “refreshed” to get to grips with all the latest gossip. #CannesScan will keep them “in the know” throughout the day and night with just a glance up at the digital billboard. From the Gutter Bar to the Palais and even from the yachts in the bay #CannesScan is a vital utility for the hard-working and hard-partying festival folk.

The creative brings the emoji centre stage, in a simple execution that flicks through a range of symbols and expressions, before landing on the most popular emoji of the moment. The featured emoji is a bold visual summary of how Cannes is feeling. The simple public service, demonstrates the strength of digital OOH to amplify social conversations on a grand scale using the largest, most prominent screen in Cannes.

#CannesScan is coordinated through OpenLoop, the Digital OOH campaign management dashboard, which analyses #cannes themed twitter streams and publishes the outcome on the unique Le Grand Screen, towering 12 stories high, and clearly visible across the bay, day and night. A network of D6 screens on the ground also feature the real-time emoji poll.

Ric Albert, Digital Director at Grand Visual, said:

“When you are feeling jaded, and potentially a little inebriated, an emoji will do. Visual analytics are easier to read than the written word, and the minimalist simplicity of this execution is its strength. So you can forget scouring social channels, press releases and news articles – simply look up at #CannesScan, to get the true, uncut, public view on the street. Find out if it’s happy hour cocktails, or if there are too many Lion losers bringing down the mood in the bars, with one simple emoji”.

Chris Pelekanou, Commercial Director at Clear Channel UK, commented:

“#CannesScan is here to help the Cannes crowd garner the mood on the street. It’s on-trend and particularly relevant to the advertising community given the success of Domino’s emoji campaign here last year, which took home the Cannes Titanium Grand Prix. It demonstrates the huge potential of combining OOH with social media platforms for connecting with people on their own terms, in a way that is relevant, accessible and potentially humorous.”

Post Lions #CannesScan Summary:

Mornings in Cannes were positive, with all emoji’s showing people looking forward to the day ahead, from sunshine, smiley faces & peace signs, mornings were a surprisingly positive place in Cannes, and emoji’s were a far cry from the sore heads and hangovers expected.

Throughout the week the mood at midday was the most varied. Quite likely due the fact that every day was different, from networking, sunbathing, or listening to an inspiring talk. The varied emoji use shows the variety of the week.

Whilst there was variety during the day, when evening came, one thing was clear, people only had one thing on their minds – Cannes Lions awards. The top emoji’s of the evening was Trophy, stars, hands clapping. Whilst some may say Cannes is just about the Rose and beach parties,  #CannesScan shows people are happy to celebrate great work.

The Cannes Lions 2014 logo

The dust has settled on Cannes Lions 2014. The hangovers have been dealt with and real life has resumed. So how did it go for the digital out of home category and for GV?

For Grand Visual it has been an amazing year at Cannes. Looking at entries to the full range of categories there were an incredible 58 submissions that specifically credited GV. This is more than double the submissions for 2013 and reflects both the increasing ambition for digital activity in the physical world of outdoor, plus the reputation for innovation that Grand Visual has earned over the years.

Those submissions were across multiple categories including Outdoor, Media, Cyber, Branded Content, Design, Innovation, Film, Promo & Activation, Mobile and Titanium. Again this points to the emergence of digital out of home and digital experiential as mainstream and integrated activity.

Out of those submissions 9 were shortlisted and 4 bronze Lions were awarded. The final tally recognized Pepsi Max Unbelievable and Google Front Row in the Outdoor Lions; Google Front Row in Promo & Activation Lions and Google Outside again in Cyber Lions.

So it’s been the best year so far for GV at Cannes Lions and a huge congratulations to all the team for this outstanding achievement. And of course a big shout to the brilliant agencies we have worked with over the last 12 months.

So what else was of interest specifically in the digital section of the Outdoor Lions? There were a few of familiar faces in the winning entries.

The brilliant bit of theatre for Samsung’s stare-down picked up a bronze.

Another S4-promoting campaign was the Smart Phone Line in New Zealand. The campaign recognises that the fans who queue up to be the first to own the latest product are the ones to be the nicest to. It’s a social campaign with a big, cool real world digital face.

“Magic of Flying” for British Airways was of course the run away (runway?) winner for any campaign utilizing digital tech and OOH. Hats off to the team at Storm for pulling that one off. Campaigns like this get everyone excited and really push the digital OOH channel in terms of consideration with creative teams.

My favourite entry (beyond the ones we delivered) was “The Social Swipe” for international relief organisation Misereor. In terms of execution it tackles the challenge of card transaction at the outdoor installation and opens up a host of thoughts on actually monetising interactions.

Finally, to get a creative’s perspective on where digital OOH is going have a look at these interviews with leading creative “grand fromages” in Cannes this year.