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Serena Williams may have stepped down from the tennis world, but the power of her brand and the passion and integrity of her spirit is strong enough to evolve with her. Williams’ post-tennis campaign from Nike, “Never Done Evolving” captured the Digital Craft Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity today.
Nike, with AKQA studios in Melbourne, Portland and São Paulo, used AI to travel back in time to create a match-up between Williams from her first Grand Slam at the 1999 U.S. Open versus her at the 2017 Australian Open. The goal was to gain insight on how Williams got to where she is today and how she keeps challenging the future.
Machine learning was able to recreate each era’s playing style, down to decision making, shot selection, reactivity, recovery and agility based on archival footage. Then, Nike was able to bring the models of Williams to life by re-rendering the players from each generation into an entirely new scene and have them appear to be playing and responding to each other.
“The discussion really came down to the fact that in the Digital Craft category, the work really showed artistry,” said Digital Craft jury president Resh Sidhu, global director of Arcadia Creative Studio.
Digital Craft Gold winners
- Spotify, “Wrapped on Platform Experience” by Spotify In-House.
- Congresso em Foco, “Transparency Card” by AKQA Sao Paulo.
- Gorillaz, “Gorillaz Presents” by Google / Nexus Studios / Eleven Management.
Design Lions
The Design Grand Prix went to Microsoft and McCann for “ADLaM—An Alphabet to Preserve a Culture.” The groundbreaking design grew from brothers Ibrahima and Abdoulaye Barry, who looked to evolve their own alphabet.
Working with Microsoft since 2018 and developed in partnership with McCann NY, the language of the Fulani people of West Africa, known as Pulaar, is spoken by over 40 million people, but for most of history, the language had no alphabet. Determined to preserve their native language, in 1989 the Barry brothers created an early version of ADLaM— the acronym A, D, L, M, Alkule Dandayɗe Leñol Mulugol, means it is “the alphabet that will prevent the culture, the people, from disappearing.” The need remained to digitize the alphabet so it could be used to communicate through technology remained, and now the new digital version of ADLaM is now available for use across the Microsoft 365 suite, desktop and mobile platforms, preserving a beautiful and important culture while promoting literacy across West Africa.
