Renault Wins Creative Strategy Grand Prix at Cannes for Rural EV Charging App

In 2020, Renault transformed a small French village into a haven for electric vehicle charging. “Village Electrique” by Publicis Conseil won the Outdoor Lion Grand Prix in 2021. Now the agency and automaker are back with another Grand Prix-winning campaign in the Creative Strategy category, based on the same concept.

Renault’s “Plug-Inn” expands rural charging stations all over France by connecting electric car drivers with private charging stations through an app. The campaign hopes to connect EV drivers with local communities in France to enable up to 475,000 additional electric charging points.

It’s kind of like an Airbnb for EV drivers as it links travelers with private charging stations in more remote regions, where finding a place to recharge is usually a bigger obstacle and sometimes a barrier to people going electric.

“This was creative strategy redefining the car category,” said Creative Strategy Lions jury president Amrita Randhawa, CEO of Publicis Groupe Singapore and Southeast Asia. “This was creative strategy that was opening up an entirely new revenue model for the brand. It was delivering real value, including monetary value, to its consumers. And it was solving an infrastructure problem that no one else had solved.”

Creative Strategy gold winners:

• M&M’s | “Spokescandies on Pause” by BBDO New York
• Reckitt and Ambitious About Autism | “Me, My Autism & I” by Havas London
• Grupo Estrategico Pae | “Morning After Island” by Ogilvy Honduras
• Partners Life | “The Last Performance” by Special Auckland

Creative Business Transformation Lions

After picking up a Design Grand Prix on Tuesday, Microsoft and McCann New York continued their winning ways with a Grand Prix win in the Creative Business Transformation category for “ADLaM—An Alphabet to Preserve a Culture.”

The campaign saw Microsoft transforming the alphabet of the language of the Fulani people of West Africa, called Pulaar, into a new digital version. The alphabet, known as ADLaM, is now available for use across the Microsoft 365 suite, desktop and mobile platforms, preserving an important culture while promoting literacy across West Africa.

Creative Business Transformation Lions jury president Justin Peyton, chief transformation officer, Wunderman Thompson APAC, said the campaign was transformational for both Microsoft and the communities that benefitted from the technology.

“On the surface, it might appear to be a beautiful set of designs, but what it really showed us was how an idea like that could connect to what was an otherwise marginalized culture and marginalized people, [and] empower them to create their own businesses within that culture,” said Peyton.

Creative Business Transformation gold winners:

• Nikkei | “Well-Being Index (GDW) by Dentsu Tokyo
• Renault | “Plug-Inn” by Publicis Conseil

Creative Commerce Lions

HungerStation, one of the leading online food ordering platforms in Saudi Arabia, worked with Wunderman Thompson teams in Riyadh and Seattle to create a tool that hands the food decision-making process over to a deeper part of the mind. “Subconscious Craving” earned a Grand Prix in the Creative Commerce category.

Images of different cuisines are presented to the user via a tool in the HungerStation app, which uses the camera to track users’ eye movements. It then uses topic modeling AI to organize food options and present an instant report of what the eye lingered the longest on to reveal the “Subconscious Craving.” The tool then generates a list of local restaurants where HungerStation customers can order.

Creative Commerce Lions jury president Nancy Crimi-Lamanna, chief creative officer, FCB Canada, said the first Grand Prix category winner from Saudi Arabia won “because it was such a beautiful way to get people to order. It adds value to that experience—it turns it from something very transactional into something very emotional. We love that it solves a pain point: that choice overload we have when trying to [order] food on a food-delivery app.”

Creative Commerce gold winners:

• Lunchables | “Lunchabuild This” by Goodby Silverstein & Partners
• Oreo | “Oreocodes” by VMLY&R Commerce New York
• Bank of Montreal | “Nxt Lvl” by FCB Toronto
• Iceland Foods | “Iceland Food Club” by Ketchum London

Creative Effectiveness Lions

Ogilvy India and Cadbury Celebrations worked together to help out smaller businesses in India that were hit hard by the pandemic with a second round of ads featuring Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan.

The agency and candy brand saw that while big brands were more equipped to make a comeback after the economic devastation, local businesses and stores did not have that luxury.

They decided to lend a helping hand to small businesses struggling during the pandemic with last year’s “Not a Cadbury Ad.” With the data-driven campaign returning for a second year, machine learning was used to create ads that doubled as ads for Cadbury and thousands of local businesses. “Shah Rukh Khan-My-Ad” grabbed this year’s Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix.  

“Sales results were undeniable. It had massive cultural impact. It’s a classic example of personalization at scale done in an interesting manner,” said Creative Effectiveness Lions jury president Devika Bulchandani, global CEO, Ogilvy.

Creative Effectiveness gold winners

• Kraft Heinz | “Heinz Draw Ketchup” by Rethink Toronto
• Brahma | “The Foamy Haircut” by Africa Creative DDB Sao Paulo
• Madrid Fusion | “Invaluable Food” by Leo Burnett Madrid

Paul Hiebert contributed to this story. Follow all of Adweek’s Cannes Lions coverage here.