A campaign by ad agency JWT San Juan for Banco Popular de Puerto Rico won the top PR award at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity on Monday, emerging from 1,130 entries.
The Interpublic unit’s win is the fourth straight year an ad agency has taken the PR Grand Prix prize since the PR category’s inception in 2009.
Gail Heimann, vice chair of Weber Shandwick, chaired the jury for the PR awards, which were added three years ago for the advertising-dominated festival.
The JWT campaign, "The Most Popular Song," enlisted popular salsa orchestra El Gran Combo to re-write their welfare classic “No Hago Mas Na” (“I Do Nothing”) with the goal to provide a more inspirational message amid the sluggish Puerto Rican economy. The revamp, broadcast across TV and radio stations last Aug. 16, was well-received and hit the top of the charts, resulting in an image boost for Banco Popular. Every time the song played, the bank got a three-minute publicity boost, JWT said.
JWT beat 134 finalists from around the globe out of 1,130 entries.
In the U.S., PR agency finalists included Fleishman-Hillard/Minneapolis (Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Minn.), Euro RSCG Worldwide PR/New York (The French Will Never Forget 9/11), F-H/St. Louis (AT&T), F-H/Washington (Bloomberg Government), MSLGroup/New York (Underwriters Laboratories).
But they were all shut out of the gold, silver and bronze awards for PR. Complete list of winners is at http://www.canneslions.com/work/2012/pr/index.cfm?award=1.
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