Taking pride in our creativity and purpose: Mars celebrates 10 Wins, 16 Shortlists at Cannes Lions 2024
For marketers, the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity represents the pinnacle of industry recognition. The annual festival in France celebrates the best in advertising and communications. It serves as a platform for professionals from across the digital, marketing, and creative industries to engage in conversations about the evolving landscape and future for groundbreaking and meaningful creativity.
Cannes provides a unique platform for businesses to showcase their creative excellence and provides an opportunity to share impactful work on a global stage. At this year’s festival, we connected, learned, and continued our momentum of building iconic brands and added to last year’s success. We’re thrilled to be recognized for the work of our brilliant teams alongside agency partners, with Mars taking home 10 Cannes Lions – including a Grand Prix for PEDRIGEE™ Adoptables – as well as making 16 shortlists.
Mars Marketing Leaders participated in a full program of panel events, workshops, podcast opportunities and media interviews. As part of official programming, Leonid Sudakov, President, Petcare Growth, Digital and Platforms and Najoh Tita-Reid, Petcare Chief Brand & Experience Officer gave a keynote address on La Rotonde stage at the Palais where they shared our intention as responsible marketers to provide true value for our consumers and leverage creativity for greater impact. Gabrielle Wesley, Chief Marketing Officer, Mars Wrigley North America, who shared her thoughts on what it takes to be a CMO.
Congratulations to the talented Associates and partners who played a significant role in the success of Mars at Cannes Lions 2024 as we continue to build iconic brands and experiences that are connected, personalized and meaningful.
Achievements and Awards
Let’s take a closer look at the award-winning campaigns that helped us bring our Purpose to life:
PEDRIGEE™ Campaign: Adoptable
- Awarded 1 Grand Prix, 1 Gold Lion, 1 Silver Lion, 1 Bronze Lion
- PEDIGREE™ took home the brand’s first-ever Grand Prix award – the festival’s top honor awarded in each category – for the “Adoptable” campaign. The campaign supported the brand’s ongoing ambition to end dog homelessness, democratizing dog adoption ads by using AI to transform images of shelter dogs into studio-quality photography.
SHEBA™ Campaign: Gravy Race
- Awarded 3 Bronze Lions
- To promote SHEBA’s Gravy Indulgence cat food, eight of the internet’s most famous cats went paw to paw to lick their way to glory in a Gravy Race. The film was live-streamed from Times Square and enjoyed a combined IRL and online audience of over 55 million.
PEDIGREE™ Campaign: Tail Orchestra
- Awarded 2 Bronze Lions
- Dogs were presented with PEDIGREE treats and other less appealing stimuli. The responses of the dogs’ tails conducted music ranging from slow and mellow to bright and joyful, which an orchestra followed, showing us the joy that dogs bring to their humans, and that Pedigree treats bring to the dogs.
WHISKAS™ Campaign: Meowzer
- Awarded 1 Bronze Lion
- Internet searches for low-maintenance dog breeds – that are quiet, don’t need training or even to be taken out for walks – have skyrocketed in recent years. Mars recognized that such a dog does exist but it needed a name change – to cat. The campaign showed a series of short film ads showcasing the "Meowzer" as the answer to people’s prayers to people searching for easy-to-care-for dogs by targeting them based on their digital footprint.
M&M’s™ Campaign: Ring of Comfort
- Shortlisted
- We created the Almost Champions Ring of Comfort, the first-ever ring for the losers of the Super Bowl. We worked with scientists and diamond-making experts to transform comforting M&M’s Peanut Butter into diamonds to be placed on the ring and showcased it at the Super Bowl. The ad starred three NFL Hall of Famers who never won the Super Bowl as well as an A-List actress who lost two Oscar races in one year.
SHEBA™ Campaign: Love Beats Allergies
- Shortlisted
- SHEBA found that 1 in 4 cat owners are allergic to their pets, proof that owners will go to great lengths to be with their cats. SHEBA displayed images of purring kittens and puffy eyes across more than 100 out-of-home screens near large pharmacies, offering SHEBA discounts to target owners who purchase allergy medication.
Dreamies™ Campaign: Humans Called Cat
- Shortlisted
- This campaign aimed to make the DREAMIES™ brand famous with a fun, surprising, non-traditional media idea that grabbed headlines and dominated the internet (the natural kingdom of cats). The goal was to get cat fans to fall in love with DREAMIES™ by making famous the fact that 95% of cats find DREAMIES™ irresistible. The creative idea was to prove that the 5% of cats who don’t find DREAMIES™ irresistible are, in fact, humans called Cat!
