ALMA: Winning a Lion in Film Makes Us Proud

ALMA Creative Chairman and CEO Luis Miguel Messianu celebrated on Friday, June 22, the first Lion awarded to the agency at Cannes in 2018. The agency’s Geremy campaign for Tobacco Free Florida won bronze in Film, adding another honor to the five shortlists it made at the festival.

“For me it is a great source of pride to win in the Film category with a government account like Tobacco Free Florida in a long format for the general market. We’re talking about many components and I’m very proud of the whole team that put this together. This is a client who always asked us to adapt existing work and this is our first original television campaign, and truth to tell it was a very nice job that shows great insight.”

This is the 22nd Lion the agency has won in the last six years. ALMA has four consecutive years winning, but Messianu said the festival this year has been completely different from previous ones. “I call this Cannes on a diet with a reset button, in which being shortlisted is already a huge achievement,” he said. “It went back to its origins and somehow we were a little spoiled in recent years. In 2017 we won ten Lions, eight in the previous year. We were very lucky because we had the ads, but also the festival was more generous.”

The ALMA CEO hopes the Hispanic industry returns home having learned the lesson of staying united. “Today more than ever we realize that, after winning eight Lions instead of 20, it’s time to see the big picture and talk about the importance of our development as a market and not individually. There are markets like Colombia and Brazil that look like the neighborhood. We have to open our eyes a little and realize that being altruistic and thinking big has its benefits.”