CANNES, France—180LA’s campaign to tackle a systemic issue—voter suppression—with its “Boost Your Voice” campaign for Boost Mobile earned the agency another Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions festival, this time in the Integrated category.
Many of Boost Mobile’s stores are located in lower-income areas, where counties across the country have been closing down polling places, causing longer lines for voters and making it that much more difficult to vote. 180LA decided to use those stores to combat voter suppression and give people another place to vote.
“We felt very strongly that true integration, real integration, is about transcending intermedia and integrating into culture and society,” said Titanium & Integrated jury president Tham Khai Meng, co-chairman and worldwide chief creative officer at Ogilvy & Mather, of the decision to award the campaign.
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“Brands and businesses and marketers have so much power to not just [market] their wares but to actually do so while they integrate into society and be genuine forces for good,” said jury member John Mescall, global executive creative director and president of the global creative council at McCann.
Mescall added that marketers and agencies should try to “create work designed to not just live in the world but to somehow move the world forward,” and that “it’s great for business.”
Jury member Jane Lin-Baden, CEO of Isobar Asia-Pacific, was impressed by the way the Boost campaign actually drove people to the brand’s retail locations. “We all know how difficult if can be to drive our customers into retail, and actually the retail channel is one of the most difficult spaces to crack,” said Lin-Baden. “What this campaign has done fabulously is drive a very key part of the audience into their space.”
The campaign beat out contenders from the U.S. like Wieden + Kennedy’s “Time Is Precious” for Nike (which was awarded a silver Lion), Saatchi & Saatchi’s “Bradshaw Stain” for Procter & Gamble’s Tide (silver), and Droga5’s “Do You Mean Mailchimp?” for Mailchimp (silver).
Other U.S. Lion winners in Integrated included Goodby Silverstein & Partners’ “Cheetos Museum” for Cheetos (silver) and CP+B’s “New and Not Improved” for Kraft Heinz (bronze).
Khai also noted that the jury was gender balanced.
“Our jury, for the first time, I think we made history because it’s there’s an equal number of women and men on the jury, which is a feat actually in and of itself,” said Khai. “That really gave us deep conversations. We were really forensic in our conversations and what was awarded was actually proof of that.”
