Creativity, results garner gold at Cannes Lions

0 Comments | USA TODAY, June, 2009 | by Theresa Howard

CANNES, France -- Award winners this year at the world's biggest competition for advertising creativity are, for the first time, being judged as much on results as on big ideas.

Campaigns that won big in the design, online, print and outdoor categories announced Tuesday at the 56th Cannes Lions festival included one for The Zimbabwean newspaper that used devalued currency in billboards, posters and fliers to help demonstrate economic hardships that have taken a toll on the country's residents and on newspaper circulation.

The campaign took a best-of-show Grand Prix in the outdoor category and a Gold Lion in media planning. The Grand Prix for media went to a simple one-piece mailer for Kit Kat in Japan that built off the tradition there to wish children well during...