Cannes Lions 2023: APAC winners

The Lions turn 70. 

In keeping with the times, the big push this year is on diversity, equity and inclusion. Oscar-winning filmmaker and actor Spike Lee will receive the Creative Maker of the Year accolade, an honour introduced this year. Longtime comedian Kevin Hart, founder of media company Hartbeat will get the coveted Entertainment Person of the Year Award. 

This year, the Entertainment for Gaming Lions debuts along with 29 other categories that reward campaigns for excellence in craft, creative ideas, experience, engagement, entertainment, health, purpose and strategy.

Campaign will bring a rolling coverage of all the APAC winners according to different categories. We have an analysis for the golds and the Grand Prix winners and a running tally of all regional wins at the bottom of this page. 

That's not all. Our team of global editors, including Raahil Chopra, editor of Campaign India, Gurjit Degun, creativity and culture editor of Campaign in the UK, Maisie McCabe, UK editor of Campaign, and editorial director of Campaign Asia-Pacific Robert Sawatzky join Gideon Spanier, UK editor-in-chief in a daily podcast from the Festival. Catch their chatter here.

APAC: Regional performance

As a region, Asia-Pacific had a better showing than 2022, a total of 114 Lions were won versus 104 in 2022. It's a worthy accomplishment on two accounts. Unlike Europe and US, 2022 was still a year of not normal for Asia. Most of the region was still in Covid-induced lockdowns and restrictions and advertising kept suffering, especially outdoor. Though the pandemic did accelerate a digital push for most APAC agencies, it was also the period of the Great Resignation and an adjustment with the return to the workplace policies. 

In terms of the award entries, from the APAC region, India had the maximum entries, but its 806 entries in 2023 were down from 921 in 2022. Australia increased entries from 693 last year to 786 entries this year and Japan's dropped from 540 to 494. In total, APAC entered 3,965 entries this year, slightly down on last year’s total of 4,065. See the stacked chart below for a quick comparison between award entries in 2023 and 2022. 

The chart below gives a comparison of the awards tally by market in 2023 versus 2022. 

Now for the campaigns that bring APAC glory.   

DAY 5: June 23, 2023

Category: Dan Wieden Titanium Lions 
Campaign: The First Digital Nation
Brand: The Government of Tuvalu
Agency: The Monkeys (part of Accenture Song) Australia
Award: Grand Prix

By the close of the century, Tuvalu, a low-lying Pacific island nation, will disappear from the face of the Earth due to rising sea levels. Along with the devastating loss of land, Tuvalu as a nation will stand to lose its status as a country, sovereignty, voting rights, history, culture, and place on the global stage. International laws currently dictate that a country cannot exist without physical territory. 

Working with the Tuvaluan government, The Monkeys Australia launched a radical plan for survival. Tuvalu will become the first digital nation. It will preserve its culture and statehood by uploading its records to the metaverse before its lands are swallowed by the rising sea levels.

With a media budget of $0, the Government of Tuvalu reached 2.1 billion people globally and nine countries recognised Tuvalu’s digital sovereignty since the campaign's launch.

The First Digital Nation took the prestigious Grand Prix in the Dan Wieden Titanium Lions category. Read a detailed analysis here. 
 

Category: Glass Lions
Campaign: Knock Knock
Brand: Korean National Police Service
Agency: Cheil Worldwide, Seoul
Award: Grand Prix

DAY 4: June 22, 2023

Category: Creative Effectiveness
Campaign: Shah Rukh Khan-My-Ad
Brand: Cadbury's (Mondelez)
Agency: Ogilvy Mumbai
Award: Gold

Ogilvy Mumbai and Wavemaker's work for Cadbury was awarded the Creative Effectiveness grand prix in the Market Disruption category. “Shah Rukh Khan-My-Ad” was created after the pandemic, as local businesses in India struggled to fight back from economic hardship compared to big brands with deep pockets. Together, Ogilvy Mumbai and Cadbury Celebrations helped make Shah Rukh Khan–one of the world’s biggest movie stars– a brand ambassador for thousands of small businesses, using machine learning to recreate the real-world Bollywood celebrity’s face and voice to use in ads for local shops, bringing more power to the people.

Ogilvy India's chief creative Officers Kainaz Karmakar, Harshad Rajadhyaksha, and Sukesh Nayak said: “We are overjoyed and humbled to be given the grand prix for Creative Effectiveness for 'Shah Rukh Khan-My-Ad.' This is a result of the dedication and effort of our fabulous teams at Ogilvy and Mondelez. We also thank Rephrase and Wavemaker for their valuable role in making our idea a reality. This Lion is the biggest acknowledgment of how this campaign has helped over 200,000 small stores across India through a tough time. This is personalisation at scale and more importantly, generosity at scale."

Category: Creative Business Transformation
Campaign: Well-being Index
Brand: Nikkei Inc.
Agency: Dentsu Tokyo
Award: Gold

Category: Experience - Innovation
Campaign: Shellmet
Brand: Koushi Chemical Industry
Agency: TBWA Hakuhodo
Award: Gold

This is the first gold and second award (scroll below to read about their silver win on day two) for TBWA Hakuhodo's 'Shellmet' campaign. A protective gear made from recycled scallop shells, the campaign is the sole gold winner in the category and was also in the running for grand prix. Ultimately, the jury noted that "it came down to the impact the innovation could have on human life."

DAY 3: 21 June, 2023

Category: Media - Use of Channel Integration
Campaign: Phone It In
Brand: Skinny
Agency: PHD Auckland
Award: Gold

Telecom major Skinny’s 'Phone It In' campaign comprised OOH ads printed with scripts for radio and print was one of the hottest picks in Campaign’s Cannes Contenders. Little surprise then, that it won Gold in Media for PHD Auckland for its Use of Channel Integration, in addition to the the Radio & Audio Grand Prix on day 1 (see below) for its long-form OOH copy that asks New Zealanders to become voice artists and help the low-cost telco save money. 

Category: Media - Consumer Services / Business to Business 
Campaign: The Last Performance
Brand: Partners Life
Agency: Special Group, Auckland
Award: Gold

Picking up another award, this time a gold, is New Zealand-based insurance company Partners Life, which creatively incorporated its brand into the widely-watched murder mystery TV series, The Brokenwood Mysteries with the help of creative agency Special.

As mentioned below on Day 1, Ad Nut loved the campaign as Ad Nut always enjoys zombies in ads that go after your funny bone.

Category: Social & Influencer - Audience Targeting / Engagement Strategies
Campaign: Flipvertising
Brand: Samsung
Agency: CHEP Network and The Sweetshop Sydney
Award: Grand Prix

Samsung connected with ad-resistant millennials and Gen Z through a unique marketing strategy called 'Flipvertising'.

In order to promote the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4, the brand tasked creative agency CHEP to completely reverse the traditional media targeting model. The agency used YouTube to craft a pre-roll advertisement that featured a complimentary Flip4 device, but intentionally made it extremely difficult for viewers to encounter this elusive ad.

With each search, the audience's algorithm adapted, leading them to discover an abundance of organic Samsung content that was unpaid and unsponsored.

DAY 2: 20 June, 2023

Category: Industry Craft - Brand & Communications Design
Campaign: My Japan Railway
Brand: JR Group
Agency: Dentsu Tokyo
Award: Gold

'My Japan Railway': Wood-cut stamp collection

‘My Japan Railway,’ Dentsu Tokyo’s beautiful activation that connects the train operator with its customers via an adventurous treasure hunt, has bagged gold in the Industry Craft category. In Japan, people often take their impeccable train system for granted.

The idea behind this campaign was to remind citizens of the romance and beauty of train travel while making it fun, adventurous and relatable. So, Dentsu Tokyo turned to archives and social media to research the history of train stations around the country and what emotions they evoke in commuters and then transformed each of the 600 train stations in Japan into destinations by creating unique wood-cut stamps and a web app for collecting digital stamps on a smartphone whilst passing through a station. The nostalgia of owning wooden stamps that speak of the country’s rich history and the fun of adding them digitally, almost akin to a treasure hunt, inspired people to travel more, explore more, and discover more sights and attractions, all while adding to the collection. 

Industry Craft head judge, Yoshihiro Yagi, ECD Dentsu Tokyo noted that the jury’s quest in this category was to find exciting examples of business intersecting with art, and that their guiding principles were to seek “enrichment over convenience, emotion over function and dreams over efficiency.” 

He revealed that the judges’ decision to award the top prize to My Japan Railway was unanimous and that they were impressed by the campaign’s combining of digital and analogue elements.

Category: Design - Lifestyle, Fashion, Leisure, Sports & Outdoor
Campaign: Shellmet
Brand: Koushi Chemical Industry Co. Ltd.
Agency: TBWA Hakuhodo
Award: Gold

The village of Sarufutsu in Japan's Soya district, is known for its shellfish industry.  As such, it churns out about 40,000 tons of empty shells each year which piles up in huge mounds.  Working with Koshi Chemical Industry Co. and Osaka University, TBWA Hakuhodo has come up with a novel way to recycle not only the shell materials, but also the very intention of shells as a means of protection. While not very successful at protecting scallops from humans, some of them will be given a chance to protect the very humans who harvest them from harm. The agency says it discovered that the main component in scallop shells, calcium carbonate, can be broken down into pellets and powder through a process of boiling, sterilising and crushing that can be combined with recycled plastic and reformed into protective gear—a 'shellmet'.

Our pal Ad Nut reviewed this campaign in detail and applauded the attempt to use discarded ‘waste’ materials for a practical problem plaguing Japan’s Soya district. 

Category: Digital Craft
Campaign: Never Done Evolving
Brand: Nike
Agency: AKQA Melbourne/Sao Paulo/Portland
Award: Grand Prix

AKQA’s campaign for Nike’s 50th anniversary 'Never Done Evolving' with tennis champion Serena Williams has scored a Grand Prix in the Digital Craft category.  The campaign’s clever piece of technology that eventually saw a virtual matchup between a 17-year-old Serena (the age she was when she won her first Grand Slam) and a 35-year-old Serena (the age she was when she won her last Grand Slam) was well applauded by the jury. 

DAY 1: 19 June, 2023

Category: Radio & Audio
Campaign: Phone It In
Brand: Skinny
Agency: Colenso BBDO, Auckland
Award: Grand Prix

Telecom major Skinny’s 'Phone It In' campaign comprised OOH ads printed with scripts for radio and print was one of the hottest picks in Campaign’s Cannes Contenders. Little surprise then, that it scooped the Radio & Audio Grand Prix on day 1 for its long-form OOH copy that asks New Zealanders to become voice artists and help the low-cost telco save money. 

Crafted by Auckland-based Colenso BBDO, around 2,650 ads were recorded by people calling the number, resulting in 22 hours of content for the telco.

DAY 1: June 20, 2023

Category: Health and Wellness 
Campaign: The Last Performance
Brand: Partners Life
Agency: Special Group, Auckland
Award: Grand Prix

SPECIAL AWARDS

DDB Worldwide won its first Network of the Year award and a total of 85 Lions, Apple took its first Creative Brand of the Year award, a title held by Burger King for three consecutive years. Omnicom, BBDO, and Ogilvy were the other heavy hitters. 

APAC LIONS BY CATEGORY

Campaign Asia-Pacific updates this list based on primary entrants on official Cannes Lions winners' lists. For full list of markets and agencies credited, see Cannes Lions official website.