These Were The Best Ads In The World This Year

The Cannes Lions festival the advertising industry's biggest awards show. Winning at Cannes tells the world that your ads are creative and cutting-edge, as well as effective.

Categories range from Branded Content & Entertainment to Radio, PR, and Film. Each category names a Grand Prix winner, the top prize, followed by Gold, Silver, and Bronze winners.

All of the following ads and campaigns won Grand Prix awards, the top honor at the festival, in their respective categories.

Here's a look at some of this year's best ads in the world:

A hilarious Christmas campaign for Harvey Nichols took home four Grand Prix awards including a Film Grand Prix for the ad "Sorry, I Spent It On Myself." The Harvey Nichols campaign also won a Grand Prix for its print ads. Cannes Agency of the Year adam&eveDDB is behind the holiday ads.

Volvo's "The Epic Split" won a Film Grand Prix for its epic stunt featuring actor Jean-Claude Van Damme. Swedish agency Forsman & Bodenfors created the Volvo ad as part of the larger Live Test campaign, which demonstrates the strength and durability of Volvo trucks. The entire campaign, which raked in over 100 million views on YouTube, also won a Grand Prix in the Cyber Lion category.

The Creative Artists Agency out of LA won a Cyber Lions for its work on Chipotle's viral campaign, "The Scarecrow." The integrated, multi-platform campaign included a viral video, a website, and a mobile game app.

Pharrell's song "Happy" is undoubtedly one of the catchiest, most-played hits of the year. But the song wouldn't be nearly as popular without help from Iconoclast, Paris. The agency created a 24 hour interactive experience, recorded in one shot, showing Pharrell and others dancing to the song "Happy." All footage was posted to the 24 Hours of Happy website, while the best moments were used to make the music video.

Ogilvy & Mather's Johannesburg office won big in the Radio category, claiming the Grand Prix for its work on a Lucozade radio campaign. The agency created three dramatic radio spots for the energy drink telling consumers that with Lucozade, they can conquer anything from a kid's birthday party to an Enrique Iglesias concert.

Lemz Amsterdam and Terre Des Hommes, an international children's aid organization, won the Grand Prix for Good for the Sweetie campaign. Sweetie is a computer generated 10-year-old girl designed to track down and catch online predators. The campaign worked to raise awareness about webcam child sex tourism.