Jung von Matt keeps lion for "Hitchhiker"

Last week Jung von Matt were having a bad week, there was much confusion around who did the Zalando ad, and if it was to be released at all. But worse, their "Hitchhiker" campaign ended up in Badland and risked having the awarded lion pulled.

This statement from the German Council for Public Relations outlines how the campaign was misleading and to top it all off, infringing, since there was no transparency and clarity of the sender as Stefan Gbureck kept stating it was his personal project from the start. That Jung von Matt and the client Mercedes-Benz was actually involved wasn't made clear until much later. They are recommending the withdrawal of the lion award in PR for this campaign, as "Overall, [it's] a blatant violation against the requirement of transparency Code de Lisbonne DRPR and the Directive on the PR front-line".

Now, we've sorted who did the Zalando ad, and Meedia.de says: "Jung von Matt behält Cannes-Löwen", that is they get to keep the PR lion for "Hitchhiker".

WUV.de also reports they get to keep the lion and state that Cannes Lions has decided the campaign does not break any rules in the PR category of the awards. There is however no press release on the Canneslions website regarding this yet.