Cannes Lions 2023: What separates Gold from a Grand Prix?
Guest Column: Mansi Shah, Brand Planning and New Business Director at Famous Innovations, writes about award-winning campaigns at Cannes Lions and the method behind their madness
I entered the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity with a mindset that I have a lot to learn and I need to absorb everything that the festival has to offer. And most importantly, to identify what is it really that gives birth to these extraordinary ideas.
With this, I sat through live judging sessions, and jury room discussions, watching and dissecting the work in the basement of the Palais the whole day, attending talks after talks. And as I did this for five days, a strange realization happened: To learn the insights and the truths on which all these extraordinary ideas were formed, you don't need to read any research reports or read lengthy articles. Most of these insights or premises are right there in front of your eyes, and you knew them all along.
Whether that's a language dying if not given a script (Adlam - an alphabet to preserve a culture) or pandemic blurring the line between work and personal life (Heineken bottle opener or office cleaners) or us having not enough EV charging stations (Renault's Airbnb for EV charging) or something as simple as restaurants serving substandard quality of ketchup (multiple works from Heinz).
And this realization made me say 'Why didn't I think of it?', or 'I could have done this too'. All of these learnings and insights were right there inside of me and all of us in India too. I didn't need to travel all the way and my company didn't have to spend all this money behind me to learn this. These insights were just waiting there for someone to pick them up, and go on a quest of solving it in the most creative way possible.
So what's the difference between me and someone who won a metal using these very insights? If these are so obvious, why don't we all go out and start creating these Cannes-winning campaigns one after the other?
I will attempt to answer this as a five-pointer from my conversations and chat with some of these award winners at the event.
1. The unsettling urge to solve the problem
As soon as they come across a problem, their creative mind just can't stop until they find a solution to solve it. Sometimes officially (Dreamcaster for Michelob Ultra) while sometimes hacking or hijacking the system or the authority (The congregation for Podher)
2. Finding the answer in tech
I often see all of us divided in two ways around the tech. Some of us think of tech and especially AI as an enemy of creativity and live with the fear of it replacing our jobs while the rest of us try to treat the tech itself as an idea. However, most ideas that won used tech as a tool to achieve something much bigger. They saw it as a tool to empower them (World Cup delivery, Shahrukh Khan my ad for Cadbury or Never Done evolving - Serena for Nike) and use it to find a solution or achieve an end goal.
3. Execution to the T
This is the stage where most of us give up. And a lot of ideas just die before they see the light. A lot of winning ideas we saw took multiple years (Michelob Ultra), approvals from multiple authorities (Anne De Gaulle airport), and a lot of effort in development and production (A Train of Memories).
All of us have been guilty of killing ideas which seem too complicated to execute. But when people put in those efforts they also get rewarded in a big way.
4. The trifecta of wins
All the ideas that won this year beautifully weaved in three things
- Cultural or human impact
- Business Impact
- Use of creativity
5. Keeping Scalability and impact at the heart
When I sat through the jury room, a lot of jury members said one thing. The decision to award a metal to one idea over the other, or to choose between a Gold and a Grand Prix was the scalability and the impact of the idea.
While an idea is applied to one brand today, is it scalable and can it be applied to multiple markets for multiple brands, and has a long-lasting impact? The tech for 'Shellmet' can be used to make other recyclable products all around the world, and the tech for 'Lays - Smart Farms' can also be adapted for another type of farming than just potatoes. Everyone wished even their country will have something like 'Transparency card' which will tell them how their government is spending.
So when I go back from this event and get busy with business as usual, I am making a promise to myself that anytime I come across an interesting insight/problem/opportunity, I am going to go back and read these 5 points, which will remind me and push me to take an action to be able to turn it into an extraordinary creative idea.
Cannes 2024 see you soon! Because this time I truly know it all.
