All the Cannes Grand Prix Winners for 2012

Agency: R/GA, New York — Client: Nike
Yet another triumph of product development for R/GA and Nike, the FuelBand accelerometer, worn on the wrist, tracks and translates one’s activity—whether walking up stairs or skateboarding—into “Nike Fuel” points as a way to motivate fitness.

Agency: Creative Artists Agency, Los Angeles — Client: Chipotle
This stirring stop-motion environmental spot told the story of a farmer who builds his small operation into a giant industrial machine, then has a crisis of conscience. Its breathtaking visuals were transcended only by the gorgeous cover of Coldplay's "The Scientist" by Willie Nelson.

Agencies: Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Boulder, Colo., and Digitas, New York — Client: American Express
In 2010, AmEx introduced Small Business Saturday, an effort to devote the day after Black Friday to driving sales at smaller companies. CP+B and Digitas won two Grand Prix awards for adding new tools and initiatives.

Agency: BETC, Paris — Client: Canal+
A bear starred as a hotshot Hollywood director—a bit of a diva, a complete control freak but an enormous talent nonetheless—in this hilarious ad for the French cable network. Turns out it was the daydream of a taxidermied bear rug who'd spent many hours lying on the living room floor watching Canal+.

Agencies: Fabrica, Treviso, Italy, and 72andSunny, Amsterdam — Client: Benetton
The provocative "Unhate" campaign showed world leaders kissing on the lips. Three ads were honored: Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahu, and Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy.

Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, Shanghai — Client: Coca-Cola
Jonathan Mak Long, the 20-year-old Hong Kong design student whose logo tribute to Steve Jobs went viral last year, added a Cannes Grand Prix to his résumé for an Ogilvy-commissioned poster that turned Coke's iconic white stripe into two hands holding a bottle.

Agency: Jung von Matt, Hamburg — Client: Mercedes-Benz
The German agency won for "The Invisible Drive," which used an animated LED cloak of invisibility to make a Mercedes-Benz seem to disappear into white clouds and blue sky, promoting the automaker's zeroemissions fuel cell technology.

Agencies: Grow Interactive, Norfolk, Va., and Johannes Leonardo, New York — Client: Google
This smartphone app let netizens send Coca-Colas to strangers around the globe via special vending machines, in a nod to the classic "Hilltop" ad ("I'd like to buy the world a Coke"). Now, people could.

Agency: Volontaire, Stockholm — Client: Swedish Institute/Visit Sweden
Sweden turned over its official Twitter account to everyday people in this campaign. Outcry after guest tweeter Sonja Abrahamsson went rogue with offensive posts doubled followers while attracting worldwide attention.

Agency: Serviceplan, Munich — Client: Austria Solar
This Austrian solar company's annual report was itself solar-powered, with text and graphics that could be seen only in sunlight—a seamless merging of form and function in a creative take on a typically boring document.

Agency: Manning Gottlieb OMD, London — Client: Google
This endearingly quirky London billboard campaign for Google Voice Search, produced with creative agency BBH, featured more than 150 sitespecific ads with phonetic spellings of nearby landmarks ranging from Piccadilly Circus to Leicester Square.

Agency: JWT, Puerto Rico — Client: Banco Popular
With half the local population on welfare, JWT hired legendary salsa band El Gran Combo to re-record its hit celebrating laziness, "I Do Nothing," recast as a tribute to hard work. The revamp shot to the top of the charts.

Agency: BBH, London — Client: Axe
After a round of product flops, the men's personal care brand hit the mark with its body spray deodorant Axe Excite. BBH's "Angels Will Fall" series lifted sales with its calamitous yet crazy-sexy heavenly girlfriend campaign.

Agency: Talent, São Paolo, Brazil — Client: Go Outside magazine
This delightfully devious campaign turned local FM radio broadcasts into mosquito repellent with a 15 kHZ frequency played alongside music from 6 to 8 p.m. Inaudible to humans, the sound scares off mosquitos by resembling a dragonfly buzz.