My Cannes Lions 2021 Top Ten

This week has seen the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity take place, albeit virtually. Lions has always been ‘the Oscars of advertising’ – but in recent years has widened its aperture considerably to embrace creativity in innovation, strategy, business transformation, use of data and eCommerce. So it’s becoming ever-more relevant to non-marketing business leaders looking to apply creative thinking across their organisations.

It hasn’t been a great year for New Zealand. We’ve had one gold (DDB's excellent ‘Sperm Positive’) and a smattering of other lesser awards. But – it has, as usual, been a brilliant week of creative inspiration – even moreso as we’re seeing two years of big ideas due to the awards being on a Covid-induced hiatus in 2020.

Here are my top ten favourite ideas, picked from the golds and Grands Prix this week. My lens tends to be work that I find innovative rather than just artistically brilliant. Work that makes sense to me from a commercial perspective – I can see how it’s driving real growth or change at more than a small, experimental scale. And where it’s trying to change the world for the better, I want to feel as if there’s truly action rather than just words – that I can see something on the line for the client business that tells me it’s real and not just marketing.

I’m writing this before the final award show, where I think we’ll see many of my top ten battle it out for the Grands Prix in Titanium, Film and Glass...

The best way to see all of the work and full case studies is to sign up to Lions Live here. Meanwhile you can see most of the case videos below...

1.    Essity - #wombstories - AMV BBDO

For Essity's brands Bodyform and Libresse, this is the latest in a run of extraordinary campaigns of taboo-busting and truth telling around womens’ menstrual and reproductive health. I think it’s the best brand marketing in the world right now. It’s fierce, it’s kind, it’s masterfully executed and it’s been mega-effective at growing Essity’s business over both the short and long terms. It’s won two Grands Prix so far this week and will probably win more at Friday’s final show.

2.    Heineken – Shutter Ads - Publicis Italy

My favourite response to Covid – Heineken turned the shutters on stores that had to close during Covid into an advertising media network, instantly generating new revenue for those otherwise shuttered businesses while also creating a powerful new advertising channel. Super smart win-win thinking that’s worlds apart from all the other Covid response dross. Won the Outdoor Grand Prix.

3.    Beco - #stealourstaff - TBWA\London

At the Beco soap company, 80% of the staff are disabled. To encourage other employers to hire more disabled people, they invited them to steal Beco’s staff, putting mini-CVs of their people on the packaging of their products. What I love about this, besides it’s huge heart, is that it’s a show of confidence and evidence that disabled people are in fact valuable, and easy to hire, train and rely on – so much so that Beco’s willing to let theirs go, safe in the knowledge that they can hire and train a new generation. Oh and it drove a 96% sales uplift. Won the Health & Wellness Grand Prix.

4.    Carrefour – Act for Food - Marcel Paris

Conventional agriculture is the leading cause of global warming and loss of biodiversity. Recognising they’d been part of the problem, Carrefour has instituted a broad range of serious change initiatives across business strategy, products, services and operations. It’s a great example of what actual commitment looks like and should be something every major corporate looks at and learns from if they care to be at all authentic in their proclamations of sustainability. Won the Grand Prix in the new Creative Business Transformation category.

Watch the case study here (you'll need to sign up or be a Lions member to watch this work)

5.    H&M – One Second Suit - Uncommon London

A generous promotion that saw H&M loan suits to young job seekers for to wear to job interviews – for free. Recognises the catch-22 that until you have a job, you can’t afford to make a good first impression with your attire – but until you make a good first impression, you can’t get a job. Especially if you’re a person of colour or other minority or disadvantaged group. Gold in Brand Experience & Activation.

6.    COPI – addresspollution.org - AMV BBDO

To make air pollution an unignorable issue, the UK’s Central Office of Public Interest published the air quality statistics for ever home in London, tying them to house prices. The more polluted your area, the bigger the hit to your home’s value. Predicatably, this led homeowners to pressure the government into bringing forward measures to decrease air pollution. A brilliant example of stimulating public good by playing on private interest. Won the Health & Wellness Grand Prix for Good.

7.    ABInBev – Contract for Change - FCB Chicago

Only 1% of farms in the US are organic. This is primarily because it takes 3 years of expensive transformation to turn a farm organic, with no guarantee there’s a buyer for your newly organic produce at the end of that journey. So Michelob Ultra made a contract with farmers guaranteeing them not only that they’d buy their produce in 3 years’ time, but also that they’d pay them 25% more for their non-organic produce through the transition. Like the Carrefour example, I love this as it's proper change-making as opposed to just talk. Won a bunch of Golds in various categories.

8.    Nike – Crazy Dreams - Weiden & Kennedy

This year’s Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix recognises the commercial success of Nike’s 2018 campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick. The work advocated for taking a stand, as Nike took a brave one of its own. It was divisive for sure, outraging right-wing Americans and making plenty question the wisdom of wading into such a contentious issue. And this is its vindication.

9.    The Royal Australian Mint – Donation Dollar - Saatchi & Saatchi Australia

Someone at Colenso had this idea about ten years ago, and we even presented it to then-Prime Minister John Key (who loved it). Alas his treasury bureaucrats shut it down. So I loved it when Saatchi’s in Australia had the same idea (completely independently) and got it away. A minted coin that’s real currency in circulation, and when you get one, you give it to charity. It’s clever and wonderful and predicted to create about $300M extra for charities each year. A bunch of Golds.

10. Kraft Heinz Canada – Pour Perfectly - Rethink Toronto

My favourite work from the design category (yes I love the BK rebrand too). This gold winner figured out the perfect angle at which ketchup most efficiently crawls out of Heinz’ iconic glass bottle, then turned the labels around so they’re perfectly upright at that angle. It’s simple, helpful, and maintains all the pack’s brand assets while making them newly distinctive on shelf. Just lovely.

Besides the work that won...

I've worked with Lions' sister company WARC on a paper that they released this week called 'Rethinking Brand for the Rise of Digital Commerce' in which I make the case for marketing needing to create 'future demand' while it's busy harvesting existing demand. Investment into brand-building continues to be eroded (despite all the evidence this is bad for business in the medium-long term) and what we can see from the data is that we're optimising ourselves out of marketing effectiveness. We're lop-sidedly chasing efficient conversion of existing demand, without realising that this only gets harder and more expensive if we're doing nothing to create future demand for our brands and products.

You can find out more about that here.

Amusez-vous bien!