An Artist Says His Work Was Copied on a Stock Service, Then Used to Win a Cannes Lion

Even a juror now questions the bronze winner for Hyundai

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Is it really Cannes Lions if there isn’t a controversy around at least one winner?

Just as the annual festival’s dust seemed to be settling, a freelance Dutch illustrator named Rik Oostenbroek has accused agency MullenLowe SSP3 in Colombia of using stock imagery that copies his signature style and dropping it into a Hyundai campaign that features little more than the stock art.

The campaign in question won a bronze Lion in the Cannes Lions Print & Publishing category this year, as well as a Wood Pencil at the D&AD Awards last month.

The work features imagery that, similar to the style Oostenbroek has become known for, conveys motion through swirling, colorful shapes.

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