Cannes Jury Insights: Ideas with Simplicity, Patience, and Business Impact Prove Successful

B2B is one of the newest categories at Cannes Lions, only in its third year. As such, the jury room of course spent some time interrogating what the category entails and what kind of work represents the best of what it is today and can be in the future. Andisa, the jury president, said that the industry is in “the decade of B2B”, adding that it’s “gaining momentum and creative credibility.” A number of key themes arose during the judging for Andisa, like the move of B2B business to help address global issues. “Leadership brands are taking leadership positions,” he says. The strength of the strategies in the work impressed too: “The creative was smart but the insights leading into the strategy was very strong.”Innovative use of content likewise stood out, “given the specificity of the target audience, as did the use of influencers, celebrities, and humour bringing a human touch to brand that seen “as functional, complex and very cold at times.” Finally, Andisa mentioned that the work coming from Brazil was particularly strong this year and that it’s a region others should look to and learn from. 

Commenting on the Grand Prix winner, JCDecaux’s ‘Meet Marina Pietro’, he said: “From [the jury’s] perspective, this is the ultimate celebration of humanity.”

For this first-time jury president, called Creative Data “the category of the future”. Rose explained: “We did talk a lot about how the next generation of minds in our industry will understand how to look at data, exploit data, and see the creativity in the data. Numbers are beautiful.” She noted that it’s easy for work in this category to get too wrapped up in buzzword bingo, getting lost in the process, which is an insight that she arrived on after judging. The work awarded was one that cut through complexity and was simple and elegant at heart. Rose’s second insight was all about knowing your audience, something that requires a human touch and instinct to do right. “I think marketers think they know their audience, but they really don't. Please who you are talking about and who you are talking to,” she adds. Finally, Rose called out the use of AI: “Please be able to explain why you've used AI, not throw it in there hoping that a jury doesn't pick it up. AI is our future; it is incredible, it is useful – whether it's generative AI or the other forms of AI, but putting it in there will get picked up by the jury.”

“We are swimming in data. How to connect it, how to make it sing, how to make it work, how to make it come alive is the role of this category. The creativity behind the ability to do that is, I think, a phenomenal skill,” Rose added. 

Mastercard’s ‘Room for Everyone’ was awarded the Grand Prix and for Rose this work, and the the three Golds, had a lot in common: “They did multiple things at once. They fueled an economy. They opened up a social conversation. They challenged the norm. They changed the law. They changed politics. They actually did several from one idea: call out the fact that ambition is good; making a profit is good. You can make a profit, and you can change the world, and you can, as we will see in that Grand Prix winner, challenge xenophobia and show the world that you can make money as well.”

Answering ‘What is direct?’ was a tough task for Pancho and his jury. To get to the bottom of it, he and the jury decided to watch all the work again – that’s the entire long list – to engage in with the questions while having a communal experience of the work. “We were lucky enough to also find a couple of good examples of AI used in the right way. To make a campaign great,” he said. As for trends that emerged from the judging, he saw consistency from brands, commenting that a “good platform-building has a lot of merit.” He also called out a “good trend” of brands and businesses going back to selling their products and services. There were also a lot of digital-based campaigns which made them easy for audiences to interact with, allowing them to make the campaigns even bigger. 

The Grand Prix was awarded to ‘The Everyday Tactician’ by Xbox, a piece of work that, for Pancho, is marked by patience, “something that many times we don't have as an industry, we rush the ideas. We actually do the case studies before they're fully ready.” Instead, Xbox took the time to see the idea through and to demonstrate its impact, earning it a second Grand Prix this week. 

Prerna was pleased to see a widespread use of technology in the Media category that she called ‘invisible’. “It was just so beautifully articulated that it delivered visible light. We didn't see technology, but we could feel it. Great ideas were centred around clever use of technology, but everything was all about purposefully solving problems,” she explained. The second trend that emerged was around how unexpected opportunities were used to enhance media moments. 

“Getting consumer attention is so difficult to today,” Prerna said, commending the Grand Prix winner, Mercado Libre’s ‘Handshake Hunt’ for “how they reframed the use of media, and media was central to the ideas that they were driving.”

Kat and her jury looked at the category with a precisely calibrated lens to determine whether the attention at the heart of work was truly earned, if it had value exchange to the consumer, and if it was culturally relevant for a brand. 

This was also the year that jurors had to wonder if AI would dominate and while it didn’t, Kat noted that it did show up in interesting and curious ways and used as a compelling storytelling device. Women’s football was another trend that emerged, a sign that more investment is being funnelled into that direction following the success of the Women’s World Cup last year. Audio was present in greater numbers and a lot of work harnessed its power. She summarised a few more trends: “A lot of campaigns and initiatives had people participating, and by that participation generating momentum and a lot of noise and a lot of social chatter and big levels of engagement. Tech and safety: a lot of brands were really taking responsibility for the category they operate in and leaning into some of the challenges associated with that. The last piece to acknowledge is purpose. We were united around the fact that purpose is much less around just awareness of a cause today, not only is it a standout, game changing world class idea, it has to have a backup of huge impact and scale,” said Kat. 

Specsavers’ ‘The Misheard Version’ won the Grand Prix, its second thus far, and Kat pointed out how tricky is it to push and promote a new category for a brand that has such strong associations with eye health, calling it a “very challenging brief” and praising that it lent into humour.

As a first time juror, Amy was really excited about this category “because it's so modern”. “This space of social influencer is changing literally all the time, so adapting to that is a challenge that we can meet with creativity.” Amy wanted to find work that had the social and influencer elements embedded deeply into the idea so that if those elements were removed, the whole thing collapsed. Impact was another emerging theme, “real work that real people gave a shit about.” She also noted that “this category is getting so ubiquitous” and “that is a challenge moving forward, I think it's an exciting challenge.”

CeraVe’s ‘Michael CeraVe’ was a hotly debated piece of work that the jury eventually agreed to award a Grand Prix to. “It blurs the lines of advertising, culture, and social, and influencer. This campaign did that really well. It was wildly ambitious, lovably absurd,” she added.