The Cyber arena as a life-changer

Around two months before the 2016 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Chloe Gottlieb sent an email to the 19 Cyber Lions jurors. Chloe was jury president for this category. She is also an SVP and executive creative director at R/GA.

She wrote, “We are all connected. Everything is digital. We all need to explore what ‘Cyber’ really means.”

Most recent Cyber Lion winners have also scored awards in other categories, PR, Promo & Activation, and Film being some of them. It seems safe to say that category overlap will eventually cause the Cyber Lion framework to disappear.

But that is down the track. At Cannes, we devoted seven solid days to assessing 2,800 entries, carefully selecting many outstanding examples of Cyber work. Our discussions boiled Cyber down to three core concepts.

1. From data to the physical

The ‘Next Rembrandt’ campaign for ING Bank won two Grand Prix awards for J. Walter Thompson Amsterdam.

The project entailed scanning in several paintings, using a special algorithm to analyze the Dutch master’s work. The agency also leveraged deep learning, 3D printing, and other advanced techniques, resulting in a stunning new painting that brought Rembrandt’s brushwork and other techniques back to life nearly three and a half centuries after he died.

This work was the fruit of a quest to transform physical information into massive digital data volumes that became the creative source for something physical.

2. Platform hacking

Another noteworthy Grand Prix winner was ‘Justino’, created for Spain’s annual Christmas lottery.

This heartwarming 3D animation tells the tale of an old security guard at a mannequin factory. The story unfolded across the Facebook and Instagram platforms, blurring the boundaries between the real and virtual worlds.

It is worth watching numerous other Lions winners that hacked into the social platform experience. They included The Super Bowl Dunk for Gatorade, GE Podcast Theatre Presents the Message, and Verizon in Minecraft.

We will likely see more ideas in the years ahead that update daily through social channels.

Another social hack was ‘Giga selfie’, a mobile site service that TBWA Hakuhodo created for Tourism Australia and was Japan’s sole Gold Lion recipient this year. The site enables travellers photographing themselves at certain iconic spots to fit vast landscapes into one giant selfie.

3. Headset-free virtual reality

One of the most outstanding of the many virtual reality entries was Lockheed Martin’s ‘The field trip to Mars’.

This project rigged a school bus with special screens in the windows that took school kids on a thrilling virtual tour of the Red Planet. The video replicated the Martian surface, perfectly matching the speeds and motions of the bus. The experience was all the more exciting because the kids did not need to wear Google Cardboard or other headsets. The Cyber Lion jury considered this entry very seriously for the Grand Prix.

Headset-free virtual reality, combined with artificial intelligence, will likely fuel even more creative efforts in the years ahead.

We live in an age in which ideas fly instantly around the globe and swiftly become obsolete. Cyber ideas are always new, and relentless competition to innovate toward tomorrow will enhance the human experience. And it is because of this that I have concluded that Cyber players should focus less on being a game changer for businesses and devote more energy to exploring how to be a life changer for humanity.

Fumitaka Takano is creative director at ADK and a Cannes Lions Cyber juror

http://www.campaignjapan.com/article/%E3%82%AB%E3%83%B3%E3%83%8C%E3%83%A9%E3%82%A4%E3%82%AA%E3%83%B3%E3%82%BA2016%E3%82%B5%E3%82%A4%E3%83%90%E3%83%BC%E9%83%A8%E9%96%80%E5%AF%A9%E6%9F%BB%E5%93%A1%E3%83%AC%E3%83%9D%E3%83%BC%E3%83%88%EF%BC%9A%E3%83%A9%E3%82%A4%E3%83%95%E3%83%81%E3%82%A7%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A3%E3%83%BC%E3%81%A8%E3%81%97%E3%81%A6%E3%81%AE%E3%82%B5%E3%82%A4%E3%83%90%E3%83%BC/427419This article appeared first in Japanese on Campaign Japan