Lil Nas X’s music video for “Old Town Road,” Tinder’s “Swipe Night,” and Asics’ “Eternal Run” were among the Grand Prix winners in the three Entertainment Lions categories this year at Cannes. 

A diverse selection of Grand Prix winners also saw top prizes for a climate change campaign in which an Arctic town offered to host the Summer Olympics, an emotive short film for a Taipei real estate company and a campaign that turned Sao Paulo's canceled Pride parade into a music video on an Instagram feed, while many of the Gold Lion winners in the category went to campaigns centered on purpose. 

In the main Entertainment Lions, Tinder’s Swipe Night by 72andSunny won one of two Grand Prix. The video series prompted users to make choices in the last hours of their lives in "choose your own adventure" style, as an apocalyptic event threatened to destroy the entire world. The entertainment property initially launched in the U.S. in 2019 and rolled out internationally in 2020. 

Jury President Jae Goodman, CEO of Observatory, said of the campaign: "In a moment where Tinder users around the world were restricted from the human contact Tinder is built to create, the teams at Tinder and 72andSunny turned the platform into one for entertainment. The fact that the key product feature – swiping – is key to the storytelling and places the user in control just like they are when using Tinder itself was much-discussed by the jury. Moreover, the entertainment then fueled more connection as people who chose similar story outcomes were then connected to each other. And, of course, the insight is terrific: it’s the last night of the world, what do we do? “Connect” via Tinder. Last, the entertainment itself was not only wildly entertaining but also wonderfully well-crafted."

The second Grand Prix went to Sinyi Realty’s “In Love We Trust,” by Dentsu Mcgarrybowen's Taipei office. The emotive short film from the Taiwanese property developer was created to address the high divorce rate among young couples, and to encourage them to explore their fear of commitment. Sinyi's intention was to encourage more young people to think about marriage, as in the long term this leads to couples deciding to purchase property. Ahead of the film's launch, the agency started an online debate about the phrase "the age of doubting marriage."

Jae Goodman said the jury was impressed by the way the campaign "took the long view," adding: "There will be no overnight business impact from this campaign, but it is about shifting culture. The cultural insight around it is remarkable." 

He added that "it doesn't scream at you and there are no company logos in scenes...it simply lets the storytelling resonate."

In the Entertainment for Music category, one of two Grand Prix for Entertainment for Music went to the video for Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road, directed by Prettybird's Calmatic (who was honored in Ad Age’s 2020 Creativity Awards as Director of the Year).  The spectacular spaghetti western sci-fi mashup saw the hip-hop star and Billy Ray Cyrus play cowboy bank robbers. 

The second Grand Prix in the Entertainment for Music category went to Latin e-commerce platform Mercado Libre and agency Gut Sao Paulo for “Feed Parade.” The campaign recreated every square meter of the canceled Sao Paulo Pride parade route turned it into a music video on the Instagram feed of Brazil's biggest LGBTQ+ artist, Gloria Groove, allowing people to tag themselvs and others. 

Wyclef Jean, president of the Entertainment for Music Lions jury, said the campaign was a great example of "using technology to engage and to send a message out" and described the way that people could tag others as "overall just genius." "We all need to send these signals out around the world," he added. 

The first of two Entertainment for Sport Grand Prix went to Asics' Eternal Run, by Edelman and Unit9, representing Edelman's first Grand Prix win at Cannes. The category is a relatively new one, having been launched in 2019.

The experiential campaign, promoting the brand's Glideride shoe technology challenged runners to take part in a race without a finish line in the salt flats of Utah. Jury president Ben Hartman, chief client officer international of Octagon, said the jury was "blown away" by the work and even though it was some of the least discussed work in the jury room, jurors had "such strong feelings from a positive perspective" about the campaign.

"It took everyone by surprise," he added. "The idea is based purely on joy. After the year we've just had, it felt like we were all running our own race with no finish line."

House of Lapland’s Salla 2032, by Africa DDB, won the second Entertainment for Sport Grand Prix. The idea centered on a small town above the Arctic Circle making a bid to host the 2032 Summer Olympics—all to highlight the threat of climate change. Hartman said it was a "magnificent" Grand Prix that looked to borrow equity from the Olympic movement but juxtaposed that with parody to make a point about the environment, and also tapped into the cultural zeitgiest.