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Cream of Venice

Welcome to the Cream of Venice selection 2008, Cream magazine’s annual round-up of the best in media innovation, distributed exclusively at The Venice Festival of Media.

Produced in association with The Wall St Journal Europe, this is our roll call of honour, a listing of the brands and agencies that are taking on the challenge of media creativity in the age of fragmentation and differentiation across the world.

 

We think everyone who has worked on the campaigns highlighted in this special edition deserve industry acclaim. It represents the very best of all the work selected for inclusion in the last four issues of Cream – now distributed to users of our global strategic resource and database of excellence, www.cmdglobal.com.

As our regular readers know, the website is updated daily with case studies from across the world (and, soon, news about upcoming channels, deals and creative trends) and the quarterly magazine picks a selection of the very best work and also reveals the key insights emerging from three months of news and activity across the global media and marketing industry.

Our media mix in this special edition includes everything from classified ads to special tip-ons, to global mobile campaigns via social networks. There are events, venues and taxi services in addition to more traditional communication channels such as TV and out-of-home.

The aim of Cream of Venice is to create a gold standard for creative media, a showcase of the smartest thinking around. Next year the standard will – we hope – be even higher, but this is the work, the bulk of which comes from 2007, that we think the industry could learn something from today.

We’ve also distributed some agency and brand accolades to highlight particular sources of creative media inspiration. Congratulations are due to OMD and Starcom Sweden on the agency front and Unilever and Nike on the brand side.

Naturally, the question I suspect I will be asked at the Palazzo del Cinema in Venice will be “how did you select these agencies and campaigns?”. Agencies and marketers are a highly competitive bunch, after all.

For the Agency Network of the Year and the Advertiser of the Year the answer is easy. OMD has had more campaigns in Cream (already recognised as a quarterly benchmark of excellence) than any other media network for the past year and Unilever out-scored other marketers on the same criteria. Agency Office of the Year and Campaign of the Year were picked by the editorial team under my management. There’s rarely a dull campaign in Starcom Sweden’s output and its use of non-traditional media is usually inspired. See page 10 for a general overview and page 12 for a detailed write up on the recent campaign for Death Proof.

Nike’s Zoom campaign is our pick as the Campaign of theYear because it takes mobile and Bluetooth and turns them into entertainment, an event and a spectator sport. All too often digital channels operate in isolation, but this work takes the action on to the streets. Nike has created a piece of street theatre that extends its message beyond the brand evangelists. Media is at the heart of what makes this work successful and talked about.

In addition to these four commendations we’ve also selected 15 “Cream Picks” to showcase the wide variety of work that can be found at CMDglobal.com. They come from all markets and all media and simply showcase best in breed across a variety of channels. And because not every marketer faces identical challenges, we’ve also suggested other campaigns that might be of interest and which you can view in full on CMDglobal.com.

It’s this duality of functionality and inspiration that makes Cream and CMDglobal.com such perfect partners. Both offer access to inspiring media case studies and information about trends and brands that are thriving in the brave new worlds of engagement, digital, convergence and entertainment.

CMDglobal.com also offers you the chance to search out similar case studies, check out competitor activity and research the brands coming up for pitch. They come as a package for what, frankly, has to be the best deal in media. For about €100 users get access to 50 case studies on CMDglobal and a year’s supply of the magazine (four issues).

And if this year’s Cream of Veniceselection has been made, the search for next year’s stars has already started. The spring edition of Cream contains 25 shining contenders and CMDglobal.com highlights a selection of 50 excellent campaigns in addition to all the other work that we are uploading on a daily basis.

 

Having revamped the design of Cream at the start of the year, our major focus in 2008 is to ensure the content you want is easier to find on CMDglobal. We’ll be running more special features, adding more information on trends and highlighting the work of individual brands more often to make what is already a unique resource even more useful.

And as we have been since we launched in 2005, we’ll be continuing to seek out the very best in media creativity and delivering insight and inspiration to you. It only remains for me to say that if you think your work deserves to feature on CMDglobal and in Cream then please let me know.

 

Alastair Ray
Editor, CMDglobal.com and Cream Magazine