The Creative Effectiveness category in Cannes is only two years old. Last year’s jury had the responsibility of setting the category standards for a brand new award in our industry. I had the privilege of being part of the jury this second year, allowing me to learn some additional details on what it takes to win a Lion in a category that will undoubtedly become increasingly important.
In order to submit a case for this category it has to be built around a piece of work that has won a Lion or has been shortlisted the previous year at Cannes. So the work we are judging has already been recognized as creative. Now it’s time to award its effectiveness.
Personally, I consider this one of the most enriching categories to judge since it is the only one that is not completely open to creative interpretation. There is a point where you can actually demonstrate that one idea is better than another, and the judgement becomes very objective. Of course it still offers room for magic, intuition, and imagination. Is the combination between reason and emotion what makes this category so intriguing?
There were fewer entries this year than the first and this was not only related to recession reasons (actually, total entries were up almost 15% this year). The fact is that agencies have realized it is not as easy to prove success or effectiveness for every winning piece from a previous year.
A bit more than 90 entries were entered, and the pre-shortlist was cut down to 53 cases. We determine the pre-shortlist based on a pre-read round as a preliminary voting phase. After reading the 53 cases carefully, we had a chance to discuss each one, then re-voted while meeting in Cannes. This last round of voting defines the shortlist. This year, 17 cases made it to the shortlist, but after some additional discussion, 4 were removed. You can see all shortlisted and winning cases here.
We ended up with 7 shortlisted cases, 5 Lions (no Bronze, Silver or Gold in this category) and one Grand Prix. The cases that took home a Lion were the following:
LION WINNERS
- Chrysler – “Born of Fire”
- Diageo Australia – “Watermark”
- Febreze – “Breathe Happy”
- Initiative Vermisste Kinder – “Germany Biggest Search for Missing Children”
- Snickers – “You are not you when you are hungry”
GRAND PRIX
- Axe – “Excite”
As we all know, the jury members and the jury President change every year, and therefore the learnings from one year might not necessarily apply for the following year. This is why I tried to encapsulate only the learnings that I consider crucial and most relevant for the following Juries.
I will share the insights on two areas:
- Before submitting: identifying the potential of your case
- Ready to submit: writing a winning case
Before submitting: Identifying the potential of your case
Should I consider entering now or wait until I receive the official call for entries?
Although the call for entries won’t arrive until February/March next year I would strongly recommend that you start reviewing the potential of all your agency’s work that has been awarded with a Lion or a shortlist this year. Leaving it for later will make you forget about it, lose some momentum and end up writing the case with limited time to gather all relevant information. Why wait longer if all the information you need to prove the success of your story is already available?
Gathering all the relevant evidence can take longer than you think but most importantly writing a winning case takes way longer than expected. The jury can immediately value those cases that are well thought out and properly articulated. The quality of the effort and time behind a case becomes very clear when comparing stories.
Would I write the case based on an execution or an idea?
Be realistic when reviewing the winning work from your agency. It’s very rare to actually build a case around a print ad, a banner or an event. It’s difficult to prove a solid story of success from one-off executions. A central idea with multiple touch points will always have more chances.
Can I confidently build a real story or will I need to post-manufacture some bits?
As mentioned above, there were almost 40 cases that didn’t even make it to the pre-short list. When reading some of those cases in isolation they can feel very impressive, but once you read them in comparison they become weaker. This is particularly true for those cases that were written as an exercise of reversed engineering, post-justifying an already existing creative idea. It’s not an easy task to come up with great rationales recreating the existence of some never-heard-before consumer insights strangely built around the actual creative idea. Although it takes a lot of talent and effort to build invisible bridges between strategy and ideas, unfortunately (actually, fortunately) most of the jury members are senior clients or planners and can immediately differentiate the real truth from the post-manufactured.
So, no matter how brilliant your previously awarded idea is, make sure that it is the creative result of a real strategic story. Don’t let the anxiety of having the chance to win one more Lion push you to work hard on something that isn’t genuinely true.
Do I have proven business results or I will need to rely mostly on social buzz as main evidence of success?
Engagement should never become the end, it should always be the means for a bigger, more ambitions business end.
Making social buzz the focus of the results won’t help unless they are linked with the ultimate business objective. It’s very rare to find one case that only wants to create social buzz. The fact that one idea had millions of views/tweets/fans doesn’t necessarily mean that it changed what people think, feel or do. It just means that there were a lot of people watching or sharing a piece the content. Be clear about what happened as a result of such an impressive social buzz.
Would our case prove how we solved a problem or just how we leveraged on an opportunity for the brand?
There are clearly two different types of cases: those that are built around a challenging situation where an idea was needed to fix an actual problem and those that were more brand-centric, built to leverage an opportunity for the brand (i.e. continue a conversation, make people experience the brand idea, create something new). Both are equally valid, however, there’s always more credit to be given to those stories that have actually helped fix a problem or overcome a challenging situation.
In short, do not procrastinate. Start reviewing all the awarded work from your agency today. Select only the ideas that were based on a true story, have enough evidence that can prove clear success linked to original business objectives, and make sure it was meant to solve an existing and challenging problem. If this is the case then you should definitely consider submitting it for next year’s Cannes Lions for Creative Effectiveness.
Ready to submit: writing a winning case
Full transparency:
This element not only builds on the previous point (real vs. over-manufactured), but it also refers to the need of being proactively transparent. When a case is missing some contextual information that can help the jury judge the value of the results, it usually triggers some skepticism on the lack of full transparency of the story. Why wouldn’t you show category norms to compare against your brand success? There might be a jury member who is very familiar with your category and can share knowledge on category behavior that could immediately make your case look less impactful than the way you shared it. The Grand Prix winner did a great job at being proactively transparent, to a point that it even acknowledged its results were not as good as previous limited editions despite being pretty impressive. Humble honesty is highly valued by the jury.
Joined up story:
It’s not about filling up different sections or answering separate questions. It’s about unfolding your story in a way that makes it easy and seamless to understand by the jurors. The jury shouldn’t have to make an extra effort to find the connections amongst the facts; you should be the one making all the key connections for them. A traditional and basic structure is usually the best one to follow: Business strategy – Communication strategy – Idea –Results.
Simple understanding:
Even if you have all the key points joined up, there could be places where the story is still unclear. This could happen for many reasons. Either the story is still confusing because you are adding way too much information (too many technical details in most cases) or because you assumed that the jury might already know something that’s obvious for you but completely unknown for them.
Clarity of roles:
Being clear on “who did what” becomes crucial for those cases that are about the creation and launch of a product to solve a particular problem. The jury needs to clearly understand what criteria they should use when judging the success: the creation of a product or its communication idea for the launch? Again honesty pays off in this section. If the client created the product already and the challenge was to make a successful launch it doesn’t help that the agency tries to get the credit for the full story from beginning to end. The section to set things straight is the very first one, where the objectives are clearly articulated.
Make every section count:
Although some sections can seem more important than others, there is a lot of value on investing similar effort when filling all of them out. One good example of this point is the section that helps discount other factors in the marketing mix that could have some impact in the final results. Try your best to fill out this section with as much detail as possible, leaving almost no room for interpretation.
If you don’t have enough evidence to demonstrate the success of your case and are unable to fill all the sections properly you should refrain from submitting. It won’t only save money for your company, but it would also show respect to the Festival’s standards and the Jury’s time.
Make it revelatory:
After going through so many cases, jurors tend to remember the cases where they could actually learn something. Those cases that uncovered a great insight in order to solve a problem, or those that connected the dots differently to find a solution, are the ones that trigger the richest discussions. After all, it’s human to look for some kind of reward after so much work. In this case, the jury finds the intellectual reward from the stories they judge and the different points of view they hear. The more inspiring your story, the greater chance it will have to win a Lion.
— Alex Pallete is the Planning Director for International Business Development at JWT New York. Follow Alex on @alexpallete.
