The extensive advertising campaign that got Barack Obama into the white house has scooped a number of awards at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Awards. Advertising agency Droga5 won the Titanium prize for presenting an idea that is “provocative, challenges assumptions and points to a new direction” for ‘The Great Schlep’ campaign featuring Sarah Silverman intended to boost support for Obama amongst Jewish voters. As well as the video that saw Silverman urging young “Jewish grandchildren” to travel to Florida and persuade their grandparents to vote Obama, there was also an interactive website as part of the campaign.

The Obama campaign also picked up the integrated prize for its innovative use of three or more different types of media to deliver a powerful message. It got recognition as a clever use of television, new media, online and grass roots door-to-door campaigning.

Obama’s election campaign also had a presence in the film category, with creator of Budweiser’s classic ‘Wassup’ ads, Charles Stone III, being awarded a special jury commendation for his new version of the ad. The 2008 version showed the formerly happy and chilled out characters and where they had ended up after eight years of George Bush, being posted to Iraq and affected by the Wall Street crash. Unfortunately this ad was not eligible to win a prize in the film category as the rules state that all entries must be commissioned by a commercial client and work towards promoting a corporate identity design, but the judges felt it deserved special recognition for being such a powerful political statement.

Another big winner was newspaper The Zimbabwean, for their campaign which used the country’s almost worthless banknotes on billboards, giving a whole new meaning to sign printing and scooping gold awards in both the Titanium and integrated categories. Other winners included T-Mobile’s “dance” ad with a whole crowd dancing together in Liverpool Street station, and a paused bank robbery scene advertising a Philips TV in a unique interactive way.