CANNES, France—A risky tourism campaign that turned Sweden's official Twitter account over to its citizens, sometimes with questionable results, fought back a flood of bad press to win a Cyber Grand Prix here tonight for its creator, the agency Volontaire in Stockholm.
A second Grand Prix was also awarded in the Cyber contest—to R/GA in New York for its work on Nike+ FuelBand.
The Curators of Sweden campaign, orchestrated on behalf of the Swedish Institute and Visit Sweden, has been one of the most polarizing marketing campaigns of the year. The country's decision to allow ordinary citizens to post anything they like to the account has been hailed by some as revolutionary and derided by others as needlessly reckless. Just in the past few weeks, a firestorm of criticism engulfed the campaign after a citizen named Sonja Abrahamsson began posting some odd comments. ("What's the fuzz with Jews?" she wrote.) The Cyber jury looked past the controversy and honored the campaign for its groundbreaking approach to tourism marketing on Twitter.
Nike+ FuelBand, meanwhile, was yet another triumph of product development for R/GA and Nike. The agency spoke at length about the work in a session at Cannes earlier today.
A total of 87 Cyber Lions were awarded. In addition to R/GA's Grand Prix, U.S. agencies won one gold—Crispin Porter + Bogusky and Digitas was honored for its Small Business Saturday work for American Express—along with five silvers and nine bronzes.
CP+B and Digitas also won silver for AmEx. Grow Interactive and Johannes Leonardo won two silvers for its Google Project Rebrief campaign. The other silvers went to Creative Artists Agency for Chipotle and 72andSunny for K-Swiss.
Wieden + Kennedy won three bronze Lions for Old Spice work. The other bronze winners were MUH-TAY-ZIK | HOF-FER for Slavery Footprint, part of an anti-slavery Call + Response campaign for the U.S. State Department; Goodby, Silverstein & Partners for its Chevy Sonic campaign; StinkDigital for Wrangler; McKinney for Sherwin-Williams; R/GA for its Adam Tensta work; and BBDO in New York for HBO.
For complete coverage of Cannes Lions 2012,
visit adweek.com/cannes.