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CANNES, France—Tech giant Apple and U.K. nonprofit Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) each won a coveted Film Grand Prix at Cannes Lions today.
Film Lions is one of the few categories at Cannes allowed to award two Grand Prix. This year, the jury recognized two very different campaigns: a comedy short promoting a product and a moving film tackling suicide prevention.
The first, for the iPhone 14, is not the Apple ad that many Cannes delegates predicted would dominate the film category, “The Greatest” (though that campaign did win the Grand Prix in Entertainment Lions for Music). Instead, a 40-second spot called “Relax, It’s iPhone–R.I.P. Leon” took home the big prize in film.
The ad, created in-house, shows a man gazing forlornly at a pet lizard which he believes is dead. He texts the reptile’s owner, “I messed up…Leon is dead.”
But miraculously, Leon comes back to life and—in a clever product demonstration of the iPhone 14’s features—the man is able to unsend his message.
Apple’s commercial embodies the trends observed by the Film Lions jury when evaluating this year’s crop of work: It is short format, funny and more focused on products. As jury president Bruno Bertelli, global CEO of Le Pub, global CCO of Publicis Worldwide and CCO of Publicis Groupe Italy, said, there has been “a death of the big manifesto film” and a “comeback of humor … We selected work that is very good in selling.”
Last year Apple also won one of the Film Grand Prix.
The second Film Grand Prix
The other Film Grand Prix went to CALM and ITV’s “The Last Photo,” created by agency adam&eveDDB.
As part of the charity’s largest-ever suicide prevention initiative, the spot shows the last videos of people who took their own lives. The people look cheerful and carefree in the footage, to remind viewers that “suicidal doesn’t always look suicidal.” (CALM was also honored as Adweek’s Brand Purpose honoree at this week’s Brand Genius luncheon in Cannes Tuesday.)
“The insight is so powerful, so strong, that nothing else is needed,” Bertelli said. “It’s a beautiful piece of film and a big issue.”