Next week, the world’s most creative advertising professionals will descend on Southern France at Cannes Lions, the 59th International Festival of Creativity. Here at Visible Measures, we will eagerly await the announcement of the Film Grand Prix, the most coveted award in video advertising. Past winners of the prize include Nike’s "Write the Future" and Old Spice’s legendary ad, "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like."
We'll have to wait until next week to find out who the Cannes Film Jury chooses as Lion winners, but we can look at which spot has been the most successful in social video today. By looking at social video performance, we can gauge audience interest because in social video audiences have to actively choose to watch an ad for a view to count.
Our list is based on the The Gunn Report, which put out a list of 20 likely contenders for the Film Grand Prix. We measured the True Reach views of each creative, combining brand-driven and audience-driven clip performance. Audience-driven clips include copies, and derivatives like mixes, mashups, spoofs, and video responses.
Here are the results:
The Winners
Many of the spots have a large presence in social video, but the leader in this group of critically-acclaimed ads is clear. Carlsberg's "Bikers" ad dominates in social video, with nearly 18 million views, 5 million views more than the second place spot. Carlsberg's ad, which pranks movie-goers with a room full of scary bikers and rewards them with an ice-cold Carlsberg, has more than 40 copies and derivatives. This relatively high number of copies and derivatives, as well as its huge view count, indicate high audience participation.
Sony's "Michael" spot for the PlayStation 3, collected over 12 million views, coming in second place. Interestingly, the views for the campaign are spread out over 150 copies and derivatives, an indication of high virality.
Coming in third is Chipotle's animated masterpiece, "Back to the Start" with more than 6.3 million views in social video. Quick on Chipotle's heels is Google's heartwrenching spot, "Dear Sophie" at fourth place with 5.9 million views. Lastly, John Lewis' holiday spot, "The Long Wait," rounds out our top five with 5.1 million views.
Of The Gunn Report's contenders, which spot was your favorite? Who do you think will win the Film Grand Prix? Let us know in the comments section below!
