Amy Weston, Executive Creative Director, Clemenger BBDO: My Top 3 @ Cannes
Amy Weston, Executive Creative Director, Clemenger BBDO, represented Australia on the Cannes Brand Experience & Activation Lions jury.
Weston, along with some of the other Australian and New Zealand jurors, presents her top 3 favourite campaigns from the Brand Experience & Activation Lions competition, exclusively for CB…
The work in Brand Experience & Activation is broad. Everything we do is for brands and everything creates some kind of experience, so this category can become a dumping ground for entries. Our jury needed a tight definition for what would win in 2026.
Firstly, the word Brand sits in the title, we gave that weight. No one is judging Brand Film or Brand Outdoor, so it can’t be decorative. The second measure was interaction. Long lasting when we talked about experiences, more immediate when we talked about activations. But in short: a brand at the heart of an interaction.
Here’s some work that had that at its core.
McDonald’s ‘The Filet-O-Fish Facebook Society of 2012’ (Silver Lion Winner)
Creative Agency: VML, Warsaw
6 Facebook members became an entire idea. We loved that this felt oddly specific, but still, we were split in the room. Was Facebook still the right place for interaction today? We landed on a silver coloured yes, if you want to talk to the world, talk to a village. And we loved that Macca’s didn’t try and manufacture a community, it engaged with a very small, inactive, but fanatical one.
Wisła Kraków Football Club ‘Lucky Fan Index’ (Gold Lion Winner)
Creative Agency: Leo, London
This idea, that would be as at home at the MCG as it was in Warsaw, didn’t create passion, it organised it. The emotion was there, the data was there, now simply brought together. It felt obvious and effortless, but everyone in the room knew this was no easy thing to execute. This one moved through the jury room unassumedly, never really causing debate. And in a room a vocal as ours, that’s became a sign it had got everything right.
Columbia Sportswear ‘Expedition Impossible’ (Grand Prix and Bronze Lion Winner)
Creative Agency: adam&eve\TBWA, London
There’s no dramatic jury story behind our Grand Prix. It didn’t win because it divided the room. It won because it became hard to imagine the category without it.
Brand Experience and Activation started its life as Promo, this work redefined what a promotion could be. An unwinnable competition for a deeply passionate audience that isn’t your target. Next, it had the brand promise of exploration at its core of that promotion. Then there’s the craft, copy, wordmark, every detail pushed.
And most importantly, it entertained. It’s good fun awarding work that’s fun.
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