OVERLAND PARK, Kan. – After a week of celebrating the best in advertising and marketing, it was Sprint (NYSE:S) that took home one of the world’s top advertising prizes at the 56th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival on June 27, held in Cannes, France.
Sprint was recognized for its tech-savvy Now Network™ campaign, which engaged Internet users in an unprecedented interactive experience about what’s happening “Now.” The campaign effectively linked Sprint to all things Now by showing consumers that Sprint gives them the ability to access people and information immediately, when and how they want. The campaign captured the festival’s top award – the Gold Lion for an Integrated Campaign – a category recognizing excellence in a multiplatform advertising campaign. The Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival is considered by many as the Academy Awards of the advertising industry.
Sprint beat out several well-known campaigns from other notable competitors to win the Gold Integrated Lion award. A total of 2,205 entries were submitted in the Cyber category from organizations worldwide from which 208 finalists were selected. The Sprint Now Network campaign also took home five other awards – four Silver Lions and a Bronze Lion in the Digital Category. Sprint was the only brand to win multiple awards within a category. Additionally, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, Sprint’s advertising agency, was recognized as Interactive Agency of the Year at Cannes.
“This prestigious award is further proof that Sprint is not only a wireless company but we are also a leader in creative digital media,” said Dan Hesse, Sprint’s chief executive officer. “Our goal was to showcase the power and breadth of the Sprint Now Network and engage customers on a personal level with useful and interesting information, and the Now Network campaign has done that effectively. We are honored and we thank our partners at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners for their outstanding work.”
Sprint’s campaign channels the prevailing idea of what today’s technology is about: giving people immediate access to information they want from virtually anywhere on a multitude of devices delivered by America’s most dependable 3G network*. Sprint’s Now Network microsite offers a screen that captures and organizes a multitude of factoids from the Internet featuring graphic-infused tickers, dials and widgets. The Sprint Now downloadable widget and screensaver stream the latest headlines along with a variety of miscellaneous facts and trivia, such as the number of planes in the air at a given moment, all delivered now. Sprint’s digital spots included homepage takeovers with Yahoo! Today, AOL, ESPN.com, WSJ.com, People.com, CNET and YouTube. On YouTube, the interactive experience included a first-ever, user-generated digital clock featuring users who filmed themselves for three seconds while holding up a pre-assigned number, serving as one digit on the Now Clock. More than 100,000 Web sites linked to the Sprint Now Network microsite, which earned praise across the Web.
Several elements from the online experience were replicated in a similar fashion across other platforms including print, television and out-of-home signage.
The Cannes Lion awards add to an impressive list of honors Sprint received earlier this year for the Now Network campaign, including Gold at the Clios, Gold at the New York Festivals, Silver Pencils at the One Show, and winner at the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) Next Awards Show and the D&AD Awards Show. Sprint also won top honors at the Webby Awards and was a finalist at the New York Festivals both awards given for the Get Work Done Now™ advertising campaign.
The Sprint Now Network is more than just a physical network; it features America’s most dependable 3G network*, the largest push-to-talk community, award-winning phones and devices – including Palm® Pre™, one of the most-anticipated wireless products of the year – all combined with Sprint being the only national carrier to offer wireless 4G services. In April 2008, Sprint revolutionized data plans with an all-inclusive price plan, Simply Everything®, which eliminated the fear of overages. Also, Sprint’s Ready Now in-store customer service shows people one-on-one how to get the most out of their wireless experience.
About Sprint Nextel
Sprint Nextel offers a comprehensive range of wireless and wireline communications services bringing the freedom of mobility to consumers, businesses and government users. Sprint Nextel is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies, including two wireless networks serving more than 49 million customers at the end of the first quarter of 2009; industry-leading mobile data services; instant national and international push-to-talk capabilities; and a global Tier 1 Internet backbone. For more information, visit www.sprint.com.
