At the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity today, WPP was recognised as the year’s most creative business.
Ogilvy won Network of the Year and a Titanium Lion for Shah Rukh Khan’s My Ad for Cadbury, a data-driven campaign that personalised advertisements for nearby companies affected by COVID-19, along with Wavemaker.
WPP winners and shortlisted entries come from all departments and agencies inside the organisation. Maxx Flash’s The Killer Pack, which uses biodegradable packaging to fight deadly diseases like malaria and dengue contracted outdoors in India, and VMLY&R’s I Will Always Be Me campaign for Dell and Intel both received Grand Prizes. The former was created to make it easier for people with motor neurone disease to bank their voices by reading a story. For its voice-activated colour-selection system, Speaking in Color for Sherwin Williams by Wunderman Thompson earned the Grand Prix for Creative B2B, an honour in the first year of this category. MediaCom’s Hope Reef for Mars Petcare also received a Grand Prix for Media Placement (with AMV BBDO).
The organisation with the greatest points across all of its agencies receives the Creative Company of the Year award. WPP also received the most awards in the Creative Business Transformation category, demonstrating the company’s proficiency in developing fresh, cutting-edge goods and services for customers as well as in reinventing client interactions or business structures.
“Creativity is the most vital force in modern business,” remarked Mark Read, CEO of WPP. Being recognised as the Creative Company of the Year is a testament to WPP’s ability to support the success of our customers and to the extraordinary talent of our 109,000 employees worldwide. Thank you to them and to our customers who put their brands in our hands.
The world’s most precious resource is creativity, according to Rob Reilly, the global chief creative officer of WPP. In the most extreme situations, it has the ability to handle the biggest problems of our day. Since the last two years have required us to think differently, I believe that this year’s Cannes Lions have been a celebration of innovation for our sector. I am therefore beyond honoured to be a member of this incredible international team of the best artists in our field.
The recognition comes at the conclusion of a week in which WPP also unveiled a pro bono collaboration with the Ukrainian government on a global marketing campaign to show that the country is open for business, launched a project with IBM to address bias in ad technology, and supported the industry’s global Ad Net Zero plan, which builds on WPP’s own net-zero commitments from the previous year.
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