shots 25 Best Cannes Ads: Cyber

This year shots' marks 25 years of the brand anniversary, and as well as certain other events and special features over the year, this week, as we’re in Cannes, we’re looking back at the best 25 pieces of work to win a Grand Prix at the Festival.

On Monday we brought you our five best Outdoor executions, yesterday was Film and in both areas we presented five top pieces of work that over the years have picked up the top gong. Today, Cyber's under the spotlight as we present our best campaigns from past years in Cannes.

The definition of Cyber at Cannes Lions encompasses branded online, digital, and technological communication. The category aims to award the best creative, digital solutions for brands that utilise technology and creativity seamlessly and prove how their target audience engaged and enhanced brand value, resulting in increased business sales and recognition. Here's five that have excelled at doing that.

Nike Livestrong Foundation: Chalkbot

Agency: Wieden+Kennedy Portland

Chalking the roads is a Tour de France tradition. Spectators write messages of encouragement to their favorite riders. The Nike Chalkbot was a way to take this positive message even further. It brought the roads of France to everyone. By sending a message to the Chalkbot through SMS, web banners, Twitter or WearYellow.com, people around the world were able to make their mark in yellow. Over the course of a month, the Chalkbot gained over 4,000 followers on Twitter, received over 36,000 messages and printed thousands of them over 13 stages of the Tour de France.

Old Spice Responses

Agency: Wieden+Kennedy Portland

The Man Your Man Could Smell Like television spot was a huge success, but we wanted to engage with fans on a deeper, more intimate level.We thus created an interactive experience in which our Old Spice Guy personally responded to fans on the Internet in real time. Instead of using traditional paid media, we leveraged social platforms including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter—ultimately creating an effort that would become one of fastest-growing and most popular interactive campaigns in history.

Google The Wilderness Downtown

Agency: Google Creative Lab Los Angeles

Google released a new Chrome Experiment in partnership with the band Arcade Fire titled “The Wilderness Downtown” which acted as both an interactive music video for the band and a chance to demonstrate the emerging power of the HTML5 programming technology. By drawing on data from Google Maps and Google Streetview, The Wilderness Downtown integrated visuals of the viewer’s childhood home into the narrative, creating a unique, emotional experience. Spread across multiple browser windows that opened and closed as the experienced progressed, The Wilderness Downtown redrew our understanding of how the web (and the music video) can makes us feel.

Volvo Trucks: Live Test Series

Agency: Forsman & Bodenfors Gothenburg

The idea was to carry out extreme tests of relevant product features, in a live setup, where the outcome could never be guaranteed. The videos on YouTube were accompanied by ads and followed up by in-depth interviews with the engineers, both in printed and digital form.One of the tests was also turned into a rich interactive 360° experience.

Pharrell Williams: 24 Hours of Happy

Production company: Iconoclast Paris

More than 15 days of shoot and 2 month of day and night postproduction,design and development.Main technologies used: HTML5, Youtube HTML 5 player, phpThe main issue we had to solve was to make a fluid user experience based on a 24 hour-movie hosted on Youtube.We finally used a playlist of 3 8h videos and spent a lot of time working on the bugged html 5 youtube player!The project is iPad compatible.Something that was really important for us as well was that wherever you go into the 24 hours, the music would never stop.