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Budweiser just pulled off the advertising equivalent of a mic drop - and it lasted all of one second.

At the 2025 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the beer giant snagged the Grand Prix in the Audio & Radio category with a campaign that defied every convention of modern advertising.

No celebrity cameos, no 60-second epics, no sweeping montages. Just the first few notes of the world's most iconic songs, blaring for one second across digital channels. That's it.

And yet, it hit harder than most full-length campaigns could dream of.

Also Read: <a href="https://www.storyboard18.com/advertising/watch-cannes-lions-2025-winners-from-day-1-publishing-audio-outdoor-and-more-70579.htm">WATCH: Cannes Lions 2025 winners from Day 1; Publishing, Audio, Outdoor and more</a>

Idea

Dubbed 'One Second Ads,' the campaign - conceived by Africa Creative DDB, São Paulo, - zeroed in on one obsession: music. Not just any music, but fanatic-level, sing-it-backwards, recognize-it-in-your-sleep kind of music.

After digging into fan behaviour, the creatives found a simple insight with explosive potential: true fans can identify a song from its very first note. No lyrics needed. No chorus. Just one beat and boom! And nostalgia, energy, and recognition kicked in. So why waste 29 more seconds?

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-XghGAwNnDE?si=YoL1eX6Dnt4_fKN1" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Budweiser distilled that flash of connection into a 1-second blitz. Imagine a TikTok or YouTube ad flashing the intro to Crazy in Love, Hey Jude, or Everlong. Just one second. No product shot. No voiceover. Just sound.

And then came the challenge: Think you're a real fan? Prove it. The ads urged viewers to guess the track, sparking an organic guessing game across Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube Shorts.

Unskippable: Literally and emotionally

In an age where ads are dodged, skipped, blocked, and buried, Budweiser made something impossible to ignore - because it was over before you could even move. But this wasn't just about speed. The campaign turned fans into participants, leveraging curiosity, ego, and bragging rights.

Suddenly, Budweiser wasn't just a sponsor of the music scene - it became part of the game. And crucially, part of the fandom.

Results

For something so short, One Second Ads left a long trail of numbers:

- +119% views above digital campaign benchmarks

- 68 million impressions within the first two weeks

- A wave of organic shares, reactions, and remix content

- And, of course, the biggest accolade in the business - A Cannes Lions Grand Prix

Budweiser's campaign is a lesson in restraint - an ultra-care trait in advertising, where more is often mistaken for better. It didn't rely on bombast or celebrity endorsements. Instead, it tapped into the intimate, almost tribal bond between people and the music they love.

Also Read: <a href="https://www.storyboard18.com/advertising/cannes-lions-grand-prix-spotlight-vaseline-took-on-tiktok-pseudoscience-and-won-big-at-cannes-70708.htm">Cannes Lions Grand Prix Spotlight: Vaseline took on TikTok pseudoscience, and won big at Cannes</a>

Cannes Lions Grand Prix Spotlight: Budweiser's blink-sized ads hit a high note at Cannes

In the 2022 edition of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Dentsu Webchutney won a Grand Prix in Radio &amp; Audio Lions for its ‘The Unfiltered Tour’ campaign for Vice Media. The campaign, which is the most shortlisted Indian entry (so far), also picked up two Bronze Lions and one Silver Lion too in the same category.

In a behind-the-scenes blog for Storyboard18, Dentsu Webchutney’s former CEO Gautam Reghunath had described ‘The Unfiltered Tour’ as a “project of serious rigour and ambition”.

The key members who worked on the campaign made multiple secret visits to the museum, and spent over 18 months to put together the campaign. Under the campaign, VICE World News and Dentsu Webchutney launched a new guided tour for visitors at the British Museum in London. Interestingly, the museum has nothing to do with the campaign directly. British Museum is home to some of the world’s most disputed artefacts. Through ‘The Unfiltered Tour’, visitors to the museum could scan these artefacts using the Instagram filters and unlock an augmented reality (AR) experience that visually teleported the objects back to their homeland.

It’s for the first time that visitors to the museum were able to hear the story behind each artefact in the voices of experts from the countries they were taken from and not from where it’s currently housed. A moment of guerrilla genius that gave each of them an opportunity to play ‘audio tour guide’ right under the museum’s nose, said Reghunath. Taking this further, ‘The Unfiltered History Tour’ also extends into a ten-part podcast series featuring these experts, providing a broader education on the artefacts, as well as the history and ongoing impact of colonialism.

Watch all about ‘The Unfiltered Tour’ here:


https://youtu.be/Y7iVMnS5-LU

The other campaign that picked a Grand Prix is VMLY&amp;R's 'The Killer Pack' campaign for Maxx Flash in the Health &amp; Wellness Lions. In India, garbage collection points act as major breeding grounds for diseases like dengue and malaria, while mosquito repellent coils are only used to fight mosquitoes inside homes, Maxx Flash decided to change that practice. The mosquito repellent brand introduced The Killer Pack, a 100% biodegradable, innovative packaging lined with 5% Active Probiotic Bacillus thuringiensis, which kills mosquito larvae when disposed of in garbage dumps, dustbins, and stagnant water, helping to break the vicious cycle.

Watch the brand’s case video here:


https://youtu.be/ZHxyR9Qjnm0

CANNES GRAND PRIX