Cannes Lions 2013: Mindshare wins Gold Media Lion for Kleenex adaptive marketing

Mindshare, the global media agency network, has been awarded the Gold Media Lion in Cannes for Kimberly-Clark’s Kleenex Adaptive Marketing campaign in the UK.

Mindshare, which picked up eight Media Lions overall - one gold, one silver and five bronze - and one PR Bronze Lion, created a completely new approach to media planning for the tissue brand and the campaign has been recognized by the Cannes Media Lions Jury as setting a Gold standard for modern media planning.

By taking slow moving data on historical flu outbreaks, sourced from the NHS (the UK national healthcare service), and mixing it with fast moving data garnered from Google ad words auctions on keywords linked to illness such as ‘flu remedy’, Mindshare was able to adapt the media spend on the Kleenex winter flu campaign by geographic region in real time – only planning media where there was a live flu outbreak.

By combining the data streams through an adaptive planning interface, Mindshare was able to direct media spend with 96% accuracy to infected areas, selling an extra 500,000 boxes of tissues and increasing sales by 40% in the first two months of the campaign year-on-year.

The multi-award winning campaign (also a Festival of Media Global Winner for Best Targeted Campaign) was recognized alongside other Mindshare work in Cannes including campaigns for Unilever, Nike, American Express, HSBC, Sky and Heineken. Mindshare also celebrated in the Young Media Lions with Cynthia Soledad Recchi and Victoria Iviglia from Mindshare Argentina awarded a Bronze Young Media Lion.

Nick Emery, Global CEO, Mindshare said: ‘This is validation in our belief that an adaptive approach to media is the future of our industry. We live in a world where everything begins and ends in media, and in that rich data environment it is those agencies that can adapt to the consumer and technology changes the fastest and most intelligently that will win. Congratulations to all our clients and the winning teams, and also to Cynthia and Victoria, who have all worked so hard to win these awards.’

The Media Lions Awards followed Mindshare’s Cannes Seminar with McLaren F1 Racing featuring McLaren Chairman Ron Dennis, F1 Driver Jenson Button and a live on-stage pit stop – How to be more adaptive and why it’ll make you more creative. See seminar in full here.

Mindshare Lions Awards List (as of 18/06/13):