Geetika Sood
A quick note before the week swallows all of us again. And since its already yesterday’s news.
A week at Cannes Lions, and the thing that stuck with me wasn’t any single piece of work. It was the room. It’s infectious, you sit in it and you want in. To attend, to submit, to stand on that stage and hear your work’s name read out. It rewires something. And I keep playing this darn song on my Spotify, it’s the track the DJ plays anytime someone came on stage to collect their Grand Prix or Gold.
Everyone kept talking about the heatwave, and the content creators, and big brand pavilions across the Croisette. They all had nothing on the festival itself. Cannes is engineered to make you feel a different kind of heat – it manufactured in me FOMO with real precision and left me with one clean takeaway: make work worth submitting. No pressure.
What I came back with isn’t a folder of ideas, its hunger, and a reinstated belief in what we do in the business of communication. And here’s the part worth passing on: in the year everyone braced for AI to take over, the work that won was relentlessly human. Entries were down (~25%), the bar went up, and the jury kept rewarding the same thing – a simple human truth, made with care.
That’s why I shortlisted the ones below, from outside our Serviceplan bubble. Not because they’re loud, but because each is almost simple once you see them – the kind where the only response is “we can ALL think of that too.” Worth a few minutes today:
Apple TV Rebrand (TBWA\Media Arts Lab) – Rebuilt the entire identity by hand: real glass, light and colour shot in-camera, zero CGI – in the year everyone reached for AI. The craft IS the idea. (Also quietly dropped the “+”.) I had goosebumps when I first saw this while scrolling Instagram at the time of its release. And even when the work was awarded on stage.
Can I Get a Six Pack Quickly? (Mother, London) – Super Bowl films built on the dumb-honest questions people ask AI, for the one platform that won’t run ads. (Yes, the brand is Claude <3.) A plain question answered straight. The audience laughed even while most of us were watching the ad a third time around.
Field Barcode (GUT, São Paulo) – Mowed a football pitch into a 104m barcode you could scan off your TV for 25% off. They turned something the brand already owned into the media. The jury called it “inevitable” – the highest compliment a simple idea can earn.
SOS POS (Circus Grey, Lima) – Thousands of phones are stolen daily in Peru to drain bank accounts. BCP turned the card machines already sitting on every shop counter into emergency account-freezing points. Used what was already there.
The KitKat Heist (VML, London) – A truck of 400,000 bars was stolen before Easter. Instead of hiding it, KitKat told the world and let people check batch codes. Leaned into the crisis instead of away from it – $224m earned media in ten days. I couldn’t refuse how viral this really went. Felt less of a gimmick even after it won.
The New Face of Legs (CeraVe / Bolded) – The internet had roasted Kevin Durant’s dry ankles for years. CeraVe just… agreed and made him the “face of legs.” Didn’t invent a joke but formalized one the audience already owned. 43% sales lift.
Heinz Dipper (Rethink, Toronto) – Didn’t launch a new product. Just redesigned the fry box to hold the ketchup – fixing a 75-year-old “where do I dip” problem and making the fix the campaign. For my love of ketchup, felt ingenious to have won!
Oreo Cows (VML, NY/Mexico) – Black-and-white cookie, black-and-white cows. The whole idea lives in a visual everyone already knew but nobody had claimed. Won a titanium
The Pub That Refused to Die (Heineken / LePub) – Heineken’s ongoing fight to keep the local pub alive, told through one pub. Protect the place people gather. Simple cause, big heart. The case moved me to tears, lol. Yay for them!
The Swedish Prescription (Prime Weber Shandwick) – Reframed a trip to Sweden as something closer to medicine. A challenger-brand flip: sell wellbeing, not destinations. I had fomo cause a tourism sector won.
And a few to watch – strong thinking I’m still chewing on:
Lucky Fan Index (VML, Warsaw) – A data-led idea rooted entirely in football fandom.
Berghain – Rosalía ft. Björk, Yves Tumor (Canada, Barcelona) – Brand-grade craft showing up in artist work. Worth it worth it!
Your Way Out and Everybody Coinbase (Isle of Any, NY) – Coinbase continuing its bold, craft-led streak. And being on Super Bowl screens to drive bizarre engagement againnnnn. Case here for ‘everybody coinbase’.
Who’s Waiting for You? (Wieden+Kennedy, Mexico City) (keep popcorn and tissues at bay) – Emotional, human storytelling done properly. Feeling still beats cleverness. Few embarrassing tears later… and the case film is here
The Thousand Sponsors of Muni – All heart for the last one <3
I am sure I have left some out, boohoo for them to not making it on Geetika’s top worth remembering and regurgitating list lol.
The through-line for all of us: the winners weren’t the biggest productions, they were the clearest thoughts – and most started from something the brand or the audience already had.
Grateful for the chance to be there. Came back lighter on sleep, heavier on conviction.
(Geetika Sood isthe Head of Production at Serviceplan Middle East)
