OBERLAND and Day One Turn Data Into a Movement
How two indies made Wall Street stop and think about boardroom diversity
Let’s start with the campaign everyone’s talking about.
OBERLAND and fellow member agency Day One just landed on the Titanium shortlist with “So Many Dicks” — a campaign for e.l.f. Beauty that’s as provocative as it sounds. But here’s the thing: it’s not just a clever headline. It’s backed by serious data that exposes a real problem in corporate boardrooms.
Working together, e.l.f. Beauty and OBERLAND dug into the demographics of 36,957 board members across 4,429 publicly traded U.S. companies. What they found was both hilarious and horrifying: there are 566 men named Richard, Rick, or Dick serving on these boards. That’s literally twice as many “Dicks” as there are Hispanic women. By any name.
The campaign took over Wall Street — literally — with massive installations throughout the Financial District, including the Fulton Street Station and the Oculus. Picture commuters doing double-takes at headlines like “19x more Dicks than Middle Eastern women” plastered across station walls.
What makes this particularly sweet for our indie community is the collaboration between two member agencies. OBERLAND brought the creative firepower, while Day One Agency handled PR, helping the campaign break through to mainstream media. It’s exactly the kind of partnership that shows why being indie doesn’t mean going it alone.
Serviceplan Lands Two: From Grocery Shelves to Digital Wallets
The Munich indie proves range with radically different approaches to value
Meanwhile, Serviceplan — Europe’s largest independent agency — pulled off something remarkable: two different campaigns on the Titanium shortlist. That’s not easy for anyone, let alone an indie.
Price Takes Center Stage
PENNY puts cost savings front and center
Their “Price Packs” campaign for German discount retailer PENNY took a simple insight and turned it into design genius. Instead of fancy packaging, they made the price the star — literally. Giant numbers dominate each package, making it impossible to miss the value proposition.
Why does this matter? In an era of sneaky shrinkflation and constant price changes, PENNY’s putting their money where their mouth is. Once you print the price on thousands of packages, you’re committed. It takes months to change packaging, so this is basically a promise of price stability. The campaign moved 1.4 million products in just 4 weeks.
Financial Product Meets Public Health
Herconomy creates savings incentive for breastfeeding mothers
Serviceplan’s second shortlisted entry, “Breastmilk Money,” tackles an entirely different challenge. Working pro-bono with Nigerian fintech Herconomy, they created the world’s first financial product that turns breastfeeding into a savings strategy.
Here’s how it works: The app calculates what mothers save by not buying formula, then automatically deposits that amount into a special account earning 14.3% interest (a number that corresponds to research on breastfeeding’s developmental benefits). After two years — the WHO-recommended breastfeeding period — moms can access their savings.
This isn’t just clever financial engineering. In Nigeria, only 34% of mothers exclusively breastfeed, partly due to cultural taboos and misinformation. By reframing breastfeeding as a smart financial move, the campaign addresses both health and economic empowerment.
INNOCEAN Berlin Addresses Digital Privacy
A first-of-its-kind app blocks unwanted recording
INNOCEAN Berlin’s “CAMDOM” might win the award for most unexpected product innovation. It’s literally a digital condom — an app that protects people from non-consensual recording during intimate moments.
The stats behind this are sobering: 90% of revenge porn victims are women, and 68% are aged 18-30. INNOCEAN and BILLY BOY condoms created an elegantly simple solution. Partners place their phones near each other and swipe to activate protection. The app blocks all cameras and microphones via Bluetooth. Try to sneak a recording? An alarm goes off.
What’s brilliant here is how they’ve extended a traditional safe-sex brand into digital protection. As their brand manager put it: “BILLY BOY protects people in the analogue world, so we wanted to protect the digital generation from a threat that a normal condom can’t tackle.”
Plus One More Indie Making Waves
Sydney’s FINCH adds production excellence to the shortlist
Rounding out the indie representation is FINCH, the Sydney-based production company with their work “36 Months.” While not a member agency, they’re proof that independent creative companies across all disciplines are competing at the highest levels.
Cannes Lions 2025: Indies By the Numbers
Pre-Funk Scorecard
Dan Wieden Titanium Lions Shortlist
- Total agencies shortlisted: 18
- Total indie agencies: 5 (27.8%)
- Indie Agency News members: 4 (22.2%)
Member Agency Performance
- Serviceplan (Munich): 2 shortlists
- Price Packs (PENNY)
- Breastmilk Money (Herconomy)
- OBERLAND (New York): 1 shortlist
- So Many Dicks (e.l.f. Beauty)
- Day One Agency (New York): 1 shortlist
- So Many Dicks (e.l.f. Beauty) – PR
- INNOCEAN Berlin: 1 shortlist
- CAMDOM (BILLY BOY)
Non-Member Indies
- FINCH (Sydney): 36 Months
This scorecard will be updated throughout the festival as shortlists and winners are announced.
And seriously, check out that Dick database — it’s both depressing and weirdly addictive.
- About the Author
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Doug Zanger is the founder and editor-in-chief of Indie Agency News. He is also the founder of the Creative Bohemian consultancy, lives in the Pacific Northwest and is insufferable about it.
