What do they know in Cannes?

TV may be fragmenting but it is still capable of delivering massive audiences. Sport, for instance, still gets millions of us tuning in for the big (and even the not-so-big) matches.

Rather than buy an expensive 30-second spot in any of the major Euro 2008 soccer games, what Robert Boisen did for Puma sportswear was to steal those audiences to sell Puma’s X-Ray collection.

Four top players – Mauro Camoranesi, Freddy Ljunberg, Nicholas Anelka and Alexander Frei – were given ‘tattoos’ to wear when they went out to play. Curiosity did the rest. Fans began to notice the tattoos of bones and started searching online for explanations.

Soon they found xrayplayers.com where they were able to get under the players’ skins, literally, finding out hidden stories about their lives and their careers.

Just as the X-Ray range was designed with the inside on the outside, so the idea was to do the same with the stars. Get to know them inside out. More than just a nice bit of brand building, the website was also transactional. You could click on any item the stars were wearing and get a price for it – and buy it online.

A cool idea that turned four players into mobile posters in front of an audience of at least 100 million at a fraction of the cost of a standard TV ad.

So why didn’t it win an award at the Cannes International Advertising Festival last week? It certainly deserved to.

Probably because, these days, to get a Gold at a major advertising show, your submission has to be a brilliant bit of advertising in its own right. At Cannes, you now have to provide a short video explaining the problem, the idea and giving some indication of the results.

Robert Boisen seem to have put all their effort into producing a great campaign for their client rather than into producing a great video for themselves.