The 63rd Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity was held in Cannes, in southern France, from June 18 to June 25. More than 13,500 people from around 90 countries participated in the festival.
The festival comprised 24 categories and attracted a record number of entries, at 43,101. Making use of leading-edge technology was a major theme again this year. "Social good" was in retreat as a theme; some assessments suggested this was a result of "cause fatigue." Although being extremely important in terms of industry initiatives, at the festival there was a marked shift in momentum back toward business and brand building.
The Dentsu Group received a total of 31 awards, including the Grand Prix in the Design category, and was credited as having a Media Placement role in a further thirty-two awards, including one Grand Prix.
"Life is electric" shows 21 different methods for recharging 21 nickel-metal hydride rechargeable batteries, allowing for the visual expression of electricity, which people normally do not see. The work received praise for using the power of design to change the viewer's awareness of numerous everyday items, for weaving the brand story into numerous settings that include consumers, for the skillful and beautiful expression, and for the idea of cleverly fusing digital and analog techniques.
The TV TOKYO Corporation poster announcing the WORLD TABLE TENNIS CHAMPIONSHIPS 2015 program won a Gold in this same category.
Also, in the Product Design category, "Nameless Paints" for Kokuyo Co., Ltd. won a Product Design award, which is equivalent to a Gold.
Holding Seminars, Showing Multifaceted Activities
Dentsu held three seminars, introducing activities in a broad range of fields, from design to technology.
Yoshihiro Yagi, Group Creative Director, who was involved in "Life is electric," gave a lecture entitled "Thinking Design." Mixing in footage of some of the world's top designers with that of a charismatic local farmer, he explained that design is a thinking process rather than something seen or sensed. Bringing up such keywords as Nature, Logic and Necessity, he explained that design elicits the true nature of items, that design is sensual and actually is extremely logical, and that people have an internal need for design. He emphasized that inspiration surrounds us in all manner of business settings.
Dentsu Lab Tokyo (DLT), which is involved in using technology to develop new types of expression, conducted a seminar entitled "Creativity Through Machine Intelligence: A Conversation with Brian Eno."
This seminar focused on pursuing the creative potential presented by machine intelligence. DLT introduced a unique, automatically generated audio production project combined with the title song from Brian Eno's latest album, "The Ship." At Brian Eno's request, DLT developed a machine intelligence program which compared 100 years of historical images in the public domain collected by DLT with a recent collection of news images for similarities and then generated original ideas for the music video. ("The Ship." http://www.theship.ai)
The venture capital company Dentsu Ventures conducted an innovation seminar entitled "Redefining Creativity, Reinventing Agency Business."
In addition, Dentsu International,Dentsu Group, Carat, Isobar, 360i and Dentsu Jayme Syfu also held seminars.
