Trophies and transformation
Congratulations to this year’s Cannes winners. On page 12 you can see who won. Six agencies from two countries in the region took home 15 awards in nine categories for 10 campaigns.
That’s a lot less than last year, though, when the region won a record 34 Lions. This year, Leo Burnett and other Publicis Groupe companies were out of the running as part of the holding company’s one-year moratorium on awards shows. Impact BBDO, a big winner last year, didn’t bring back any trophies. And across the board, senior management have questioned the value of sending staff to Cannes. I found I was not alone in trading the Croisette for the canteen as many of the top regional creatives and suits I spoke to said they were not going, often putting this down to pitches at home.
Well done, though, to those who went and saw and conquered and brought back trophies. TBWA/Raad continued their roll of glory from the Dubai Lynx. The agency picked up a Gold, a Silver and two Bronzes for Highway Gallery, as well as a Gold for # SheDrives and a Bronze for Camelpower. J. Walter Thompson Casablanca won Morocco’s first Lions with its Break the Speed work for KitKat, which won a Gold, a Silver and a Bronze. Y& R won a Gold and two Bronzes, Grey won a Silver, and FP7 and The Classic Partnership won a Bronze apiece.
Sir Martin Sorrell, the recently ousted CEO of holding group WPP took to the stage in Cannes and said he wished he had managed to transform his empire faster. Now he is out the door, his philosophy of Horizontality has been abandoned, though not the concepts of flexibility, client focus and reaggregation, which are becoming the battle cry across the industry.
On page 10 we speak to Avi Bhojani, CEO of BPG Group. WPP is a 40 per cent shareholder in the Dubai- based communications company, and BPG’s verticals had been co- branded with WPP agencies: Bates, Possible, Cohn & Wolfe and Maxus. But that is changing, says Bhojani. In part because WPP has chosen to merge Cohn & Wolfe with Burson Marsteller and Maxus with MEC, worldwide, while Possible now sits under Wunderman in most markets and Bates was largely folded into other brands some years ago.
But Bhojani is also making the change so his companies – BPG Orange, BPG Max and BPG Kuwait – can be more flexible. He told me he’ll be using the word ‘glocal’ a lot more as BPG applies global skillsets to local problems.
Clients want agencies to be able to do more within one P& L. They don’t care much how that is done. But if agencies can do it and also win awards, so much the better.