Think of your most recent favorite advertisement or campaign and ponder on why you might have liked it enough to consider it among the best. Is it because it convinced you in a clever and entertaining way to buy into whatever is being sold or because you honestly believed that it had a strong, positive impact on you or those around you?And how long did it take you to remember your favorite? The rise in the expenditure that goes into the Egyptian world of mass advertising has visibly cluttered our sight and hearing with rolling reams of posts, sounds, videos and banners. But how many of those campaigns can one argue actually stand out because they make a difference and are difficult to ignore?
Via the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt
An example of a campaign that is arguably difficult to forget is Domino’s Paving for Pizza. Because – according to the initiative’s website – “bad roads shouldn’t happen to good pizza,” the internationally well-known brand offered grants of $5,000 to fix potholes and roads in states all around the United States of America.
Via pavingforpizza.com
This campaign was nominated for an award titled, The Titanium Lion, one of the more important awards at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity; an annual event that’s been striving to nourish the world’s marketing, communications and advertising game through celebrating outstanding advertisements and awarding all the creative, innovative and impactful efforts of the industry globally. “Advertisements – just like movies and series – have a social responsibility,” commented Amr El Tobgi; a Strategy, Innovation and Branding Mixologist and one of Egypt’s Cannes Lions Representatives at The Worx.
And the festival’s official representation in Egypt is inaugurating an academy in the country by the end of this year. We met El Tobgi at a private screening of the outstanding submissions at this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The event was attended by some of the top executives and managers of Egypt’s marketing agencies. We were invited and, in-between screenings of powerful campaigns, had the chance to talk to El Tobgi and Mai Salama, one of Egypt’s Cannes Lions Representatives and the Managing Partner of The Worx.
El Tobgi and Salama talked to us about how advertisements and campaigns are changing and how the Cannes Lions academy in Egypt will help its creative industry catch up with the rest of the world’s trends and innovations.
At the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity of 2019 – via CannesLions.com
Mai Salama and Amr El Tobgi giving a speech at the Cannes Lions 2019 private screening at Stash Bar. Via The Worx.
“Cannes Lions is the Oscars of advertising. It offers the most prestigious communications, marketing and advertising awards. It awards ads that make an impact,” clarified Salama. And this is reflected in the festival’s awards which include Sustainable Development Goals Lions; an award that celebrates entries with the capability to demonstrate how they contributed to or advanced the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by the United Nations. The winner of the Grand Prix in this category in 2019 was Lion’s Share; an initiative that supports animals’ welfare and conservation through collecting contributions from advertisers every time they feature an animal in their advertisement! The initiative was a collaborative effort between private corporations but it won the backing of the United Nations Development Programme. Below is an explanation of the motives behind the initiative and how it works.
Among them is also the award, Radio and Audio Lions, which acknowledges innovations and new milestones that use only sound to creatively communicate a brand’s messages. The most recent winner of this award was HBO’s West World: The Maze; an interactive audio game which transformed the popular series’ brand messages through engaging gamers in a world of sound whose events are influenced by their voice commands.
“The President of Colombia attended the festival this year. And he talked about how Colombia wants to encourage the creative industry in Latin America and ensure that the makers of media and advertising in the region get the financial aid they need to develop and empower them to have a strong economic impact,” El Tobgi told us excitedly to provide evidence of the great potential that lies within the trade. “Ads are no longer just ads,” emphasized Salama.
Well, what about the academy they’re planning to launch in Egypt by the end of 2019? El Tobgi elaborated saying that “through this academy, we’ll dig deeper into the reasons behind the success of daring and innovative projects from around the world and understand them better.”
“The school will target fresh graduates, middle management, C-level management,” said Salama clarifying the potential students of the educational institution. It’ll not tackle creatives and advertisers alone, but everyone in the marketing and marcom field as well.
For more information on Cannes Lion’s official representation in Egypt, click here.
