Marketing agency McCann Bristol has won four highly coveted Lion awards at the advertising industry’s most prestigious global event, the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
The agency received a Silver and three Bronze accolades for its GoAbility campaign with Motability Operations, which operates the Motability scheme for people with disabilities, their families and carers. 
The Silver – a first for the Bristol team – was received in the MOBILE (co-creation and user-generated content) category.
The Bronzes were in MOBILE (data/insight), DIRECT (co-creation and user-generated content), and CREATIVE STRATEGY (collaboration). McCann Bristol had been nominated for 10 Lions in total.
The wins came in a year when the competition had been more fierce than usual. As the festival did not take place in 2020, two years’ worth of work from agencies across the globe and more than 29,000 entries were being judged.
GoAbility provides Motability users with greater freedom to get out and do the day-to-day things they need and want to do.
It pairs Motability Operations, the UK’s leading provider of mobility adapted vehicles, including electric wheelchairs and mobility scooters, with Google Maps to create a community-led data capture app. 
This provides reliable, whole-journey data for those with mobility issues. The app is designed to be open to Motability’s 630,000 customers, representing a whole range of disabilities. Google has described it as “a beacon for accessibility and inclusion across the globe”.
McCann said the awards were testament to the team effort that went into the work, led by McCann’s Bristol team and supported by its offices in Birmingham, Milton Keynes, London and Bucharest.
McCann Bristol executive creative director Zane Radcliffe said: “Winning four Cannes Lions for our GoAbility project is a huge moment for the agency.
“Receiving our first ever Silver Lion is fantastic recognition of our creativity. But more importantly, acknowledgement from Cannes is hugely beneficial for a project like GoAbility, which can have a real global impact.
“It moves us closer to our goal of bringing equality and accessibility back to our cities for the one billion people on our planet with reduced mobility.” 
McCann Bristol managing director Andy Reid, pictured, added: “We couldn’t be happier about this momentous triumph.
“But perhaps our biggest achievement with the GoAbility campaign is the impact it will have on people’s lives. Too many of our cities are inaccessible to people with disabilities.
“The GoAbility project will help wheelchair and mobility scooter users to find and share information about accessible travel throughout the UK.”
The Bristol award contributed to a tally of 61 awards for McCann Worldgroup this year, made up of two Grand Prix, 11 Gold, 19 Silver and 29 Bronze Lions.
The Cannes Lions are the most established and coveted awards for the creative and marketing communications industry. The awards have been running since 1954 and a Cannes Lions trophy is recognised globally as the ultimate achievement in creativity.
