It was just a month ago that the industry was consumed with all things Cannes, but while the festival has come and gone, the insights gained from this year’s event have lingered. Contagious stopped by JWT’s New York office last week to pick out some of the most notable take-a-ways from Cannes 2013.
Across the 17 categories at this year’s festival, 12 Grand Prix were awarded to campaigns that focused on sustainability. Contagious points out that this is because clients are trying to do more and give more through their advertising. This increased interest in more humanistic campaigns has inspired brands across various sectors to take up public initiatives supporting social causes and issues. Samsung Life Insurance’s “Bridge of Life” has done this exceptionally well.
This year, appreciation for great storytelling returned, with expectations set higher than ever thanks to technological innovations allowing for more digitally inspired creative than ever before. The popularity of campaigns designed as mini-movie series grew this year as brands looked to up engagement in a less obvious, more entertaining way—check out Intel’s “The Beauty Inside,” winner of the Branded Content Grand Prix, and JWT Bangkok’s “Reflections.” Although a new standard for this type of work within the advertising industry is emerging, Contagious advises that if we want to grow as a collective industry, we must begin comparing our ads to work done by other creative industries, such as Hollywood.
As the presentation concluded, Contagious left us with some food for thought in the form of four of their key insights from the 2013 Cannes Lions:
- Having purpose isn’t easy, but it is important.
- Advertising creativity has new benchmarks.
- Creativity will become the competitive difference.
- It takes more than a great agency to do great work – it takes a great client too.