The world’s largest festival of creativity, Cannes Lions 2019, was held in Cannes from 17 to 21 June 2019. On this occasion, the team members of Studio Sonda, Ana Tavić and Martina Ukić, winners of the Grand Prix in the competition for the young lions of Croatia on the Days of Communication, represented the national young creative forces.

And here are their impressions:
“There was nothing that could have prepared us for the 5 days we would experience in Cannes, not even the Skype meeting we’d had before with Fran and Matko from agency 404, who had told us about their experience at the competition. (Thanks guys!) Newsletters have begun to come, the festival announced more than 300 lectures, more than 600 lecturers, but only when we finally arrived in Cannes we realized that this would be bigger than we had expected. The first thing we noticed at the festival were unseen security measures. But this is understandable, considering that it is a gathering of a huge amount of people!

A part from that, real positivity was reigning, the security people were always in a good mood and the festival members were always kindly trying to help. Great discipline was reigning too though, because all lectures and other contents ended up punctually in a minute. During the 5 days of the festival, we visited various interesting lectures. A few of them delighted us particularly. “Ugly Sells,” by Tim Leake tells that the audience is better responsive to ugly content (such as Minecraft or meme) because it seems to be more honest. We also learned why “Dunkin’donuts” omitted the “donuts” part in its last year’s rebranding, and learned that we should be brave and take risks in our business. From Haribo we learned how important it is in this industry to always remain a child.

Every evening, we attended the awarding ceremonies, because we did not want to miss anything. It is a special feeling to watch in an overcrowded hall the best campaigns and best creative works, and the happiness was even greater when we saw the name of Studio Sonda. In fact, Sonda won a bronze lion for its work for Piquentum!

But what we went there for was the world’s Young Lions contest. Unlike the Croatian one, when we were closed up for 24 hours without cell phone access, Cannes had different rules. The client was WWF, and the task was to create a simple, powerful and clear symbol that will trigger the generation Z (15-25 years). As the situation of our planet is about to reach the critical point, that generation is the one that still has time to change the situation, but it should react immediately. Twenty-four teams from all over the world participated in the design contest. Unlike in Zagreb, when we were physically locked in the workplace for 24 hours, in Cannes everything was a little bit more informal. In fact, we got a brief the day earlier, and worked on the task the next day from 08:30 to 19:00. In addition, in Zagreb we had worked on our own computers while in Cannes we worked on their equipment, on only one computer.

On Thursday the winner was announced and the de-brief took place, in which we received an honest feedback about our work. Although we returned home without a prize, the jury praised us and said that our work was in the top 5. Third place was taken by the Brazilian team, Ukraine shone silver, and Russia ended up on the throne.

The entire competition atmosphere was very positive. The most valuable part of the festival is the experience itself, but also the friendships and acquaintances we have taken back home with us. Such an event cannot be lived without evening contents, so we closed the festival with a closing party. There, on the beach, surrounded by people from all over the world, while watching the spectacular fireworks, we wished to come back to this place again in the future.”