Cannes Ad Festival Honors First InternetAds

The Cannes Advertising Festival, awarding its first “Cyber Lions” honors for Internet ads, gave the Grand Prix award to a Web site for photographer Frank Herholdt produced by the Hub Communications Co. in London.

The international jury praised the site for its inventive user interface, according to Reuters.

Ten of the festival’s first 16 interactive advertising awards were awarded to U.S. creations, reflecting the relative experience of practitioners there in a medium which is still evolving, jurors said. Britain took three prizes. Brazil, Australia and Germany won one each.

“In the Frank Herholdt site we saw a very high creative standard, which we didn’t see in many other sites. It took the bar up, spoke to its audience well and had a unique application of the user interface,” juror Mark Kvamme, chairman of CKS Interactive in the U.S., was quoted as saying.

The site uses a Shockwave plug-in, with circle graphics representing lenses and film negatives to display examples of photographer Frank Herholdt’s award- winning work.

Dell Computer Corp. won a Cyber Lion for electronic commerce. Award-winning sites ranged from the online version of Britain’s advertising weekly Campaign to the Hugo women’s fragrance from New York and an Australian-made site for Ford cars.

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