The NYT VR project from The New York Times won not one, but two Grand Prix awards at Cannes Lions Festival last month, with the individual virtual reality film "The Displaced," earning the top prize in the revamped Lions Entertainment contest and the Grand Prix in Mobile that the NYT VR app itself won.

2016 was my 20th year in Cannes, and it sure has changed over the years! What was once, effectively, a celebration of the world’s best TV ad in a town full of ‘Mad Men’, now sees the arrival of technology companies. This is merely a natural response to the increased role and impact that technology has in our lives as well as the changing expectations of today’s consumers with how they want brands to interact with them.

Last year, Jeff Goodby co­-chairman of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, a San Francisco advertising agency responsible for some of the most famous campaigns of the 1990s, including ones for Nike and Budweiser, wrote a rueful piece for The Wall Street Journal. In the past, he said, the only true measure of success was whether the public knew and cared about your work. “You could get into a cab and find out, in a mile or two, whether you mattered in life, just by asking the driver.” Now, “No one knows what we do anymore.” He vowed never to return to Cannes again. Does anyone know whether or not he was there this year?

I recall, in 2006, while I was MD at Cut+Run, celebrating AMV’s Guinness noitulovE, winning the Film Grand Prix, (edited by Cut+Run Founder, Steve Gandolfi). Ten years ago, there was no surprise when such a film won the big prize. Everyone had seen it; everyone was talking about it, and the outcome seemed inevitable. I find it very exciting that today, with so much content in the world, across so many channels, the Grand Prix can draw attention to an excellent piece of work, which truly represents the changes that have occurred in advertising in recent years.

"The Displaced": How is it ‘advertising’ and why does it need to be VR?

"The Displaced," which immersed the viewer in the lives of three child refugees, was extraordinary both as an editorial and as a marketing piece, said Lions Entertainment jury president Jae Goodman, chief creative officer and co-­head of CAA Marketing. Rather than describe its power, he urged the journalists assembled to watch it for themselves, but he did say that it satisfied one criterion in particular—the brand connection.

All this begs two questions:

1. How is a war documentary, which isn’t a charity film, regarded as advertising?
2. Why does a story looking at the ill-fated lives of three children, torn from their homes by the horrors of war, benefit, or need to be told in 360 VR?

In November last year, The New York Times worked with Google to roll out the largest ever distribution of VR headsets; to over 1.3 million subscribers. They were invited to download the NYT VR app and enjoy news updates in 360 VR. The launch was made possible by two advertising partners, GE and Mini, who debuted their 360 videos on the channel. Money from these advertisers enables the NYT to deliver incredible 360 VR news stories, like ‘The Displaced’, via their app channel. That’s how it’s advertising! A great piece of branded content.

‘The Displaced’ could easily have been shot in regular 2D, but I urge you to watch this incredibly moving film in VR, using a cardboard headset, while wearing headphones for a fully immersive experience, placing you at the centre of the story. (If you don’t have a headset, you can buy one here: https://vr.google.com/intl/en_uk/cardboard/get­cardboard/)

To explain why it works better in 360 VR, I’ll only say this. There are several moments in the film where the ability to look around and explore the scene hugely elevates your empathy towards the plight of the three child refugees. As an example, Oleg, 11, who was forced by the war in Ukraine to leave his home with his parents, returns to his village when the war subsides. We stand with him inside his former school classroom as he says, “Before when the teachers would yell at us, we’d say, “Wouldn’t it be cool if the school blew up?”. As he says this, I look around, (thankfully a long shot), and examine the devastation everywhere within the room. Every window is broken, huge chunks of concrete are strewn across the floor, and every item of furniture is blown to bits. The place looks hopelessly beyond repair as Oleg and his friends climb over the debris, and he says, “I would never say that now.”

I really like the simplicity of the filmmaking in ‘The Displaced’. News needs to be shot cheap, with a minimal, one or two man crew. It needs to be fast and efficient. I’m not sure what rig was used for ‘The Displaced’, but it looks like it was shot on one of the many consumer cameras now available on the market, a few of which are reviewed in this great piece in Wired magazine.