This year’s Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity saw a comeback of ads with humour that are focused on driving commercial success. Purpose campaigns were present, but much more intertwined with business objectives rather than purpose-led work. B&T caught up with three Aussie judges from this year’s festival to find out what made work stand out and other emerging trends.
Rose Herceg, President, WPP ANZ
Seeing big brands (and businesses) winning again is good for the industry.
We all believe doing good for the planet matters. Fuelling an economy matters too. Seeing work that drives growth made me smile. Even better is work that does both at the same time.
In my category (Creative Data) our Grand Prix winner ‘Room for Everyone’ by Mastercard (video below), is the best argument for creativity. This work delivers socially, economically, geographically, and culturally. It stops fear of immigration in its tracks. It helps create a booming small business economy. In reminds us that there is more that unites us than divides us. It takes data and uses it with such incredible finesse.
Imogen Hewitt, Chief Media Officer, Publicis Groupe ANZ & CEO, Spark Foundry ANZ
The opportunity to judge at Cannes is an absolute career highlight. One that is simultaneously challenging and enormously rewarding. Over several intense days, I had the opportunity to review, debate and award some of the world’s best work alongside some of the industry’s brightest leaders.
This year’s media awarding jury included a combination of both client and agency, represented about 10 different countries across multiple regions, and was diverse in gender, age, ethnicity, discipline, and experience. This diversity is incredibly important. Fairly judging work from around the world takes a great deal of sensitivity and cultural nuance. On a number of occasions, work that could have been dismissed through lack of understanding was culturally decoded by the relevant juror and subsequently awarded.
There were several themes that emerged amongst this year’s best work.
Firstly, the importance of balancing purpose and commercial objectives. This year, we saw many cases that effectively made a positive contribution to a cause relevant to a brand whilst also delivering business objectives. Personally, this is very exciting to me. The ability to do good and drive business outcomes at the same time speaks volumes about how our industry can create sustainable change.
Technology, including AI, was largely invisible. Whilst many cases utilised technology, it was used as an enabler, not at the core of the campaign. There was very little use of technology for the sake of it. Rather it was seamlessly embedded into cases, so the consumer did not so much see the technology as feel it through improved experiences.
Many of the standout cases leant into real consumer issues, from inflationary pressure to product flaws. There was real bravery in setting out to solve these challenges in interesting and meaningful ways. Product flaws were turned into features; sponsorships addressed sponsorship clutter. Strong examples of utility that transcended brands to put pressure on entire categories to up their game.
We also saw several campaigns that challenged the status quo or accepted wisdom in the service of consumers. Even some that overcame social and, in a few cases, legal constraints to bring a product, service or human right to people.
Many cases reframed media by creating new channels and placements through the creative use of context. For example, through using product as media, fans as advocates, or through the ability to deliver B2B and B2C at the same time. It was incredibly clever, wildly lateral, and searingly effective.
Key to some of the best work we saw was that the thinking was complete, with end-to-end solutions that closed the loop for consumers. Commerce solves built directly into channel. Inventive purchase and measurement solutions that made perfect sense as a well-considered and thought-out piece of the campaign.
This year saw a step forward in how seamless we can make conversion and fulfilment – how natural purchase can feel in the ecosystem of a campaign. This is an exciting development, because the more we can drive action and make it simple for customers, the greater impact we can make on a client’s business results. And speaking of results, they are mandatory. This year saw very few cases considered past the initial stages if results were not proven.
Mercado Libre’s Handshake Hunt won the Grand Prix in the Cannes Lions Media category.
Michael Rebelo, ANZ CEO, Publicis Groupe
The Creative Effectiveness Lion focuses on how creativity can be a superpower for business, delivering a superior competitive advantage, transformation and growth – unlocked through brave ideas, audacious thinking and ambitious strategy.
In this category, you can enter work that has won at Cannes over the past three years. That’s because it’s also about showing the cumulative and sustained effect of what we do – how the power of creativity will have a multiplier effect on your investment and your business.
As we were judging, while the intent was to recognise and celebrate effective work, it was also about providing learnings for agencies and marketers in the future, and setting the direction for the industry. In order for the work to be worthy of a Lion, the key criteria we focused on included:
- It had to be audaciousness and ambitious in its objectives. And that really came down to the degree of difficulty. How hard was this objective to achieve?
- After that, the most important consideration was proving the causality of the idea to achieve the desired impact. There was a clear distinction we were trying to dissect, which was causality versus correlation. You can have a campaign or an idea, and there could be an indirect effect from that. But would this outcome have been achieved without this idea?
- Then it was about direction. Does this work set the direction for the industry? Does it provide learnings for future marketing challenges? And will this really help clients and agencies make bolder, braver decisions in the future, based on seeing this work and how it has proven an impact?
In the end, Heinz’s ‘It Has To Be Heinz’ (below) won the Grand Prix because of its powerful strategy and sustained execution. After facing a five-year sales decline due to the generic ketchup category stealing market share, what did they do? Well, the answer was in the bottle! Heinz went back to what they’re about – superior product quality. They also doubled down on their platform, ‘It has to be Heinz’, and energised this consistently over a five-year period. It was a brand being very brave in the face of adversity, sticking to its brand heritage, the consistency of its platform, and using creativity to bring it to life in new and interesting ways.
Being on the Creative Effectiveness jury has been both humbling and an honour. It’s also been very refreshing and inspiring and gives me great hope for our industry. Particularly in the face of constant disruption and our role being questioned by the advent of AI, technology and platforms. All of these strategies and ideas that were awarded were the result of great human endeavour, thinking and collaboration. No ChatGPT in sight!
As agency partners, we are constantly in the spotlight trying to prove that what we do delivers value. And I believe, right now, there’s no better time for us to seize the moment and really demonstrate what we do, because it’s an industry that has so many vectors coming at it at every given moment.