Weber Shandwick Wins Gold, Silver and Bronze PR Lions at 2014 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 

The firm was awarded a Gold PR Lion in the Food & Nutrition category for the Honey Maid “This is Wholesome” campaign with Droga5 and a Silver PR Lion in the Audience Targeting/Engagement category for the Honey Maid “Love” campaign with Droga5. Weber Shandwick was also honored with a Bronze PR Lion as the creative agency in the Integrated Campaign Led by PR category for the Mattel Barbie #Unapologetic campaign with Ketchum and HL Group. In this year’s first-ever Young PR Lions competition, Weber Shandwick’s Leila Mountford and Kate Sloan also earned a Silver PR Lion for Team UK.

Cannes Lions is the world’s biggest celebration of creativity in communications and the home of great ideas changing the ways brands interact with their customers. Since the establishment of the PR category in 2009, Weber Shandwick and Prime together have won 23 Cannes PR Lions. In 2013, Weber Shandwick was the only PR firm at the Festival to receive honors for work on a Grand Prix Lion-winning campaign and the only PR firm to win more than one Gold Lion.

 

Entries in the PR category in 2014 nearly doubled to 1,850 entries from 66 countries. Arnaud Pochebonne, General Manager, France and Executive Vice President, EMEA at Weber Shandwick, served as member of this year’s esteemed PR jury.

 

Lions Health

 

Weber Shandwick was also proud to have a leading presence throughout the inaugural two-day Lions Health Festival this year, designed to celebrate and recognize creativity in the health industry. Weber Shandwick Global Healthcare President Laura Schoen sat on the prestigious Pharma Jury, where she and fellow jurors reviewed close to 1,300 award submissions from 49 countries.

 

The agency’s work on the “This Is Personal” campaign with the National Women’s Law Center was shortlisted in both the PR and Digital categories in the Health and Wellness, Education & Services section, and the only PR firm to be named to the shortlist.

 

Weber Shandwick also took to the main stage where Peter Matheson Gay, Creative Director of Health, moderated a panel on patient centricity to address the importance of prioritizing the patient voice and explored how organizations can engage creatively with patients. The expert panel featured two-time ovarian cancer survivor and MTV personality Diem Brown, breast cancer survivor and Director of Corporate Engagement for LIVESTRONG Foundation Renee Nicholas, and an HIV patient advocate who recently joined the industry, Christian Kranich from AbbVie Pharmaceuticals.

IPG Women’s Leadership Network Breakfast

 

At the Festival, Interpublic Group hosted its annual Women’s Leadership Network Breakfast to discuss women in creativity. In a conversation with three other creative jurors, Laura Schoen shared her experiences as a member of the first-ever Lions Health Pharma jury, explaining that in healthcare the largest percentage of decision makers is comprised of women so representation in healthcare communications is of utmost importance.

Also during the panel, Jenna Young, Weber Shandwick Executive Creative Director of Consumer, spoke about the creative impetus behind the Bronze PR Lion-winning #Unapologetic Barbie campaign, developed by Weber Shandwick as creative agency on behalf of Mattel. “Let Barbie be Barbie,” she said of the campaign that marked the 55th anniversary of the doll and sparked a discussion about women and beauty that would be disruptive, opinionated and empowering. The #Unapologetic rallying cry to rethink Barbie inspired a vigorous conversation about women as capable and captivating, fueled by a Barbie appearance on Sports Illustrated’s 50th Anniversary Swimsuit Edition and a full-page letter in The New York Times.

On the Main Stage

 

As host of the final session on the Festival’s Grand Audi main stage, Weber Shandwick delivered a lively discussion entitled, “A Full-Frontal, Possibly Profane Conversation on Politics, Content and Political Content. The Real and the Unreal.” The session was curated by Weber Shandwick Chairman Jack Leslie, introduced by president Gail Heimann, and featured political strategist James Carville and HBO’s “VEEP” stars Matt Walsh and Tim Simons. Check out coverage of the session on Page 7 of Lions Daily News here.

The conversation proved to be both #profaneandpolitical, highlighting the blurred lines that exist between the real and unreal in politics. Simons explained that although “VEEP”’s storyline doesn’t follow current events in American politics, oftentimes the show writes the most comedic situations imaginable, only to be proven real by actual events. And as the final takeaway from the Cannes main stage, Carville wrapped the conversation by highlighting that whether political or not, when it comes to content in today’s digital age, “If you’ve got nothing to say, the technology doesn’t matter.”