Nike Chalkbot, VW 'Fun Theory' Win Cyber Grand Prix Lions

Cannes, France-- Two campaigns that used technology to manipulate the physical world won Grand Prix Lions in the Cyber category today.

Wieden+Kennedy won for "Chalkbot," which invited cancer survivors, loved ones, and others to send messages of hope to be printed along the roadway of the 2009 Tour de France. The campaign used a trailer-mounted device to pneumatically pen thousands of messages people sent via SMS, Twitter, Web banners, and a website at WearYellow.com. Those chalk messages were seen by riders, spectators and TV viewers alike, raising awareness of Nike Livestrong Foundation. W+K Portland developed the experience in partnership with DeepLocal and StandardRobot.

DDB Stockholm won for Volkswagen's "The Fun Theory" campaign, which added interactive sound effects to physical environments to encourage healthier behaviors and then uploaded the resulting videos to extraordinary viral effect. The most famous of the bunch, "The Piano Staircase," has racked up more than 12 million YouTube views. (Scroll down to see videos from both Grand Prix winning campaigns.)

"The innovation was undeniable but more important was how the innovation came about," said Jeff Benjamin, chief creative officer of Crispin Porter + Bogusky and president of the Cyber Jury. "It's this notion of creatives coming together with technologists. Technology will reach its peak when you don't even know it's there."

A sense of real-time communication with consumers was another theme that spanned many winning campaigns. The Martin Agency won Lions in three categories for its "We Choose the Moon" campaign on behalf of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. A Web site at WeChoosetheMoon.org celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing by recreating the four-day mission in digital form, showing the stages of the historic flight and streaming more than 100 hours of audio transmissions. The campaign also rebroadcast those transmissions via a Twitter account that amassed 30,000 followers.

The winning work wasn't all virals, robots, and real-time apps. Y&R New York won five silver lions for innovative video-enabled display advertising created for Virgin Atlantic, for instance. (See the ads here and here.)

Other top-awarded agencies included DDB (Sweden and UK), Crispin Porter + Bogusky (U.S.), Kokokaka (Sweden), and TBWA (Paris).

Among countries represented here, the U.S. led the pack with 34 Lions. Other countries with a strong showing were Sweden (20 Lions), the U.K. (12 Lions), Japan (8 Lions), and France (6 Lions).

Grand Prix Winners below:

Follow Zachary Rodgers on Twitter at @zachrodgers.