LG&F Brussels' irreverent spot for Radio Donna shot through CZAR.BE scooped the top prize, the Grand Cristal for European advertising, last Saturday night at this year's Meribel Awards.
Christophe Ghewy, creative director of LG&F, was delighted with the result, especially as it comes in the same week that the agency picked up the Grand Prix at the La Mondiale de la Publicite Francophone; "It doesn't happen that often," he told shots.net. "In fact I think the last time a Belgian agency won a Grand Prix was 20 years ago, and now we've won two in a week."
Ghewy said that the idea for the ad came from a famous song by French singer Michel Sardou about life being easier when you sing it, and also from Monty Python's ode to optimism, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.
Featured in shots #86, Marriage has a girl dumping her slobbish boyfriend by singing his faults to him in front of a crowded restaurant, before running out to join her new boyfriend and driving off with him in his Porsche. The ad also won in the Media category.
Powerful anti-smoking ad, Marie, shot by directing newcomers Les Elvis, beat off stiff competition to take the Grand Cristal for French Creativity. The pair only signed to @radical.media in June this year, with Marie featuring in the latest issue of shots in the New Directors section.
The ad, shot through @radical.media Paris for Foote Cone & Belding Paris also picked up the prize in the Social Awareness category of both the national and European competition.
The awards, now in their fourth year, opened up the competition to all 25 members of the European Union for the first time this year, and introduced three more European prizes to celebrate the expansion of the EU. Cristals were awarded in each category for both a national, and also a European ad.
Maurice Levy, chairman of the jury and chairman and CEO of Publicis Group, speaking to shots.net immediately after the award ceremony, said that creatively, Meribel 2004 had been, "undoubtedly a far better year than 2003". He went on to predict that French advertising would reap the rewards of this in Cannes next year.
Guillaume Van der Stighelen, juror and CD of Belgian agency Duval Guillaume agreed; "There has been a lot of good stuff, and a lot of surprising stuff," he said, citing work for TOTAL and Peugeot as particular examples.
Saturday evening's award ceremony was dominated by two ads from the twin giants of French advertising. Last year's Grand Prix-winning agency, BETC Euro RSCG, which won with its Evian spot Waterboy, vyed with Publicis Conseil, each agency bagging four gongs apiece.
Publicis Conseil's hugely popular campaign for telecoms company SFR, which also featured in shots #86, went head-to-head with BETC's Western-style spot for Peugeot 607.
Olivier Altmann, executive CD at Publicis, wasn't in his seat for long during the ceremony as SFR walked away with the advertising prize, the audience prize, and picked up the Cristal in the Service category.
BETC's Peugeot campaign picked up the client's prize, the gong for Best Pan-European campaign (for ads that aired in three or more countries) and also won in the Car category in the European competition.
Both agencies picked up another award each; BETC for its Star Wars spoof for Mikado and Publicis for its Europe 1 spot.
Endearing work for TOTAL, a beautifully shot tragi-comic spot for IKEA that won in both the European and national categories, and a nimbly directed ad for Pepsi which won the best direction category meant however that agency CLM/BBDO got four awards and kept up with the big two.
In the other categories, Honda's Grrr, rumoured to be released as a single shortly, picked up the best soundtrack award, but it was one of the only two British entries, along with Lowe's HSBC ad Hole in One which won in the banking category, that made an impact on an otherwise quiet night for British advertising.
In a supposedly pan-European awards however, the competition suffered generally from a lack of entries from the rest of Europe. The French competition mustered 274 entries, while the whole of the rest of Europe only managed 194. Some delegates complained that in some categories the winners were weak, with one British executive producer diplomatically calling the winners "strange".
Francois Chilot, juror, MD of Les Producers and president of the cfp-e admitted that the festival was lacking in European flavour: "There have been more [European] entries than last year, but they are still lacking," he said. "This is a festival that has lots of French entries because to begin with this is a French festival, but I would hope to see it grow to be as European as possible - these things don't happen immediately though."
Organisationally the awards were, at times, endearingly shambolic. The tone was set on the first night when a rather embarrassed Mr Levy turned up 20 minutes late to open the event. At the awards ceremony on the closing night some prizes were announced in the wrong order, some weren't picked up, and in one case there were not even enough prizes to give out.
Mr Levy brushed these concerns aside saying, "I regret slightly that there have been problems with the organisation, but I think this gives it its local charm, and we must remember that we are in the mountains after all."
For more info on the Meribel festival, visit http://www.meribel-adfestival.com/home.htm.
