Insights from the 2022 Cannes Lions Creative Effectiveness winners 

Consumer participation, a step-change in brand purpose, tech partnerships and agile solutions for new media habits lead to commercial success, according to a new report from WARC. 

Insights from the 2022 Cannes Creative Effectiveness Lions winners  identifies trends and themes common to the award-winning campaigns of this year’s Cannes Creative Effectiveness Lions, which celebrate the measurable impact of creativity. The findings are critical to understanding how marketers are driving business performance.

Four key themes

1. Tapping into fans supercharges creative ideas

Fan-first approaches can drive engagement with specific fandoms while being the starting point of mass-reach campaigns. Cheetos, Michelob and McDonald’s explored the potential of engaging fans, which is reflected in an increase in ‘participation’ as a creative strategy this year.

2. Ecosystems for change are brands’ new growth engine

As the discourse around purpose evolves, there is a new focus on long-term platforms able to deliver business growth while tackling systemic issues. Renault and Three created ecosystems to show their products in action, and Michelob transformed its supply chain to help farmers transition to organic.

3. TV returns to fuel visually arresting creative

With lockdowns leading to shifts in media consumption, TV became a trusted companion for at-home audiences. Data shows TV was the lead media for 47% of the shortlist, and winners used it for powerful visual executions.

4. Brands explore AI-driven creativity

Be it to repair fractions in society or for entertainment reasons, winners experimented with creative AI applications. For Michelob and the Canadian Down Syndrome Society, partnering with a tech giant was key to the success of the initiative. Reflecting this trend, partnerships rose in popularity this year: 40% of shortlisted campaigns used partnerships, up from just 1% last year.

Key quote

“Marketing as a discipline is living an existential crisis: it’s losing its credibility, its gravitas, its stature. CEOs and CFOs are perceiving marketing to be fluffy; they have very little confidence in their marketing teams being able to drive business growth.

“With some companies even disposing of CMO roles, the marketing function is getting fragmented. This is why it’s important to focus on creative effectiveness: proving marketing’s impact and ROI for businesses will bring it back to the C-suite table and give it the gravitas and stature that it deserves” – Jury president Raja Rajamannar, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Mastercard. 

A sample of the report can be downloaded here. The full report is available to WARC Creative and WARC Strategy subscribers.

Tune in for a WARC Cannes Creative Effectiveness podcast, to be released at the end of August, featuring the strategists behind two of the winning entries.