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South Africa's first Digital Craft Lion awarded to Grey Africa
The Cannes Lions Festival is the world's largest annual awards show in advertising, marketing and communications. The festival was cancelled in 2020 due to Covid-19. This year, judging and announcement of the winning works from the 2020 and 2021 competitions has been conducted online.
The Bronze Lions received by Grey Africa and WPP-Liquid, was awarded for the “Decolonize Autocorrect” initiative – which created a multi-cultural language exploit that updated autocorrect to include all 11 languages.
"It's wonderful to see this campaign being awarded on the global stage and I'm even more delighted that it's won South Africa's first Digital Craft Lion," announces Fran Luckin, chief creative officer at Grey Advertising Africa.
“Decolonise Autocorrect” also recently received two coveted Mobile Merits at the One Show and a Silver Clio in the Digital/Mobile – Emerging Technologies category. The “Decolonise Autocorrect” initiative is an example of how a creative idea can be manifested by technology when incorporated into a once unachievable campaign.
Steph van Niekerk, creative director at Grey Advertising Africa, explains: “From my very first day on the Savanna account, my dream has been to win international awards on this iconic local brand. Cannes has proven that this is entirely possible, and we will continue to challenge and push ourselves to do even better next year. What is exciting is that this upward creative trajectory is translating into tangible business results – with Savanna seeing unprecedented growth in volumes and brand equity.”
The Grey team worked for two years to create the technology to transcribe a language at 500 words each. Savanna has long been known for its dry sense of humour, South Africans like to laugh at ourselves, 11 official languages and only the one option, colonialist English. Such practices sadly erode our cultural heritage and as such the campaign was also addressing a societal problem.
For Grey and the WPP-Liquid team to be recognised in pioneering and innovative categories is testament to effectiveness in navigating the industry with game-changing campaigns and illustrates the value of sticking with a creative idea for as long as it takes to execute. Over two years in the making.
"I am so incredibly proud to work alongside such an exceptional creative agency but, more than that, I'm thrilled that the cut through work behind these awards is also winning with consumers. The positive momentum in brand equity and volume growth over the last year is testament to that,” says Maija-Llina Hansen-Chipps, Savanna and RTDs marketing lead at Distell.
This year, Fran Luckin was interviewed on the exclusive Cannes Live TV platform, where she discussed creativity, technology and what it means to bring home South Africa’s first Digital Craft Lion.
Credits:
Advertising Agency: Grey/Liquid South Africa, Johannesburg, South Africa
Chief Creative Officer: Fran Luckin
Executive Creative Director: Glenn Jeffery
Creative Director: Steph van Niekerk, Francois du Preez
Art Director: Marais Janse Van Rensburg, Bethea Polanski
Copywriter: Maxine Twaddle, Mkhuseli Radebe, Sanele Ngubane, Marais Janse van Rensburg, Steph van Niekerk
Head of Production: Lara Bayley, Linda Hauser
Business Director: Jacqui Howard-Tripp
Account Manager: Brett David; Lubba Ngonzo
Production Company: Produce Sound
Digital Creative Director: Kristoff Smith
UX: Kathrine Pelser
UI Designer: Michael Williams
Developer: Siyabonga Hlengwa
SEO: Craig Wilson
Data Analytics: Zaheer Adhikari
Dev/Ops: Clemens Maart
Project Manager: Leezl Kaschula
Animator: Bohlale Radebe, Francois Venter
Audio: Louis Enslin
Client: Maija-Llina Hansen-Chipps, Lazola Dali, Eugene Lenford, Irmie Marman, Paigon Prince
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