The Fun Theory is a competition itself where people can upload ideas designed to make mundane tasks interesting. Take the winning submission for example:

And the Nike Chalkbot was a machine that would imprint hopeful messages along the Tour De France– submitted through texting, Twitter and a website. The Chalkbot received some 23,000 messages to be chalked on the roads of France, so it was truly a viral experiential phenomenon.

What’s fantastic about these two projects is that they both incorporate people. They’ve humanized their brands by bringing the individuals who interact with them to the surface. And, what they’ve created is an artifact of real-time interaction. Volkswagen, instead of creating the experiences themselves, created a space to give others a chance at pure creativity — people designing for people. The Chalkbot allowed the community to be a part of spreading a message during the Tour de France, and this made people the world over feel as if they not only had a voice, but as though they were a part of the experience.

What’s even more interesting is just how invisible the brands tied to both of these pieces are. These are proof that you don’t always have to slap your logo onto a piece of experiential design to get the point across. Experiential design lends itself to a conversation. Through a good experience, your brand will be represented, and the people you’ve designed it for will have a new-found understanding of what you stand for.

Design + Technology is the hot new “creative” as it relates to the ad industry. The big Cyber Grand Prix winners at Cannes are indicative of where advertising and the world of design are headed. There’s no argument that great design will always be great design and regarded as such. But, in today’s advertising world, where we are routinely charged with producing great design that drives results, the addition of technology into the mix is, in my opinion, the best recipe for success.

DDB Stockholm’s work for Volkswagen took home a win for its terrific Fun Theory campaign that took ordinary experiences, added technology and not only made the experiences fun, but changed behavior as a result.

Weiden & Kennedy’s Chalkbot campaign for Nike Livestrong was evidence that by integrating technology into an event, you can actually bring the public into the event and make them a part of the experience, almost seamlessly.

In both cases, technology was the hero, and the driving force behind the concept, but the beauty of both of these integrated experiences is that the technology was invisible. The winners at Cannes validate that this is where the world of advertising is moving. Design + Technology may seem like strange bedfellows at first – similar to the traditional agency creative process integrating with the digital creative process. Those agencies that mastered that were way ahead of those who kept them separate.

For us, it has been an adaptive process over the last couple of years. Our designers were at the top of the heap – so we had to learn how to embrace the collaborative effort between technologists and designers. There were fits and starts – but today, I can say without reservation that the line between our designers and our technology gurus has blurred into one big integrated space. And happily, it has changed the face of our business, as well as the kind of work we are able to do for our clients.

*The poster is the 1939 Cannes Film Festival vintage poster, which is from the year of the planned festival debut. The film festival was canceled that year, because of the start of World War II