McCann’s LATAM Leaders: Cannes Entrants Should “Cut to the Chase”

Sitting down at the Little Black Book & Friends Beach as the week on the Croisette came to a close, LBB’s Ben Conway caught up with McCann Mexico’s CCO Luis ‘Tim’ González and McCann Colombia’s CCO Diana Triana - both presidents of the network’s LATAM Creative Leadership Council - to discuss the awards show from their region’s perspective and to explore what makes award-winning work generally. 

“The first thing we were really excited about was that we had about 60% more [Cannes Lions] entries than last year,” says Tim. But that certainly hasn’t been their only metric of success. “Entries are about money,” he continues., “If you have the budget, you have the entries. But contenders? This year, we’ve tripled our real contenders.”

While the McCann Mexico CCO says that you always have to be prepared for projects to possibly underperform at awards shows, he expresses his pride in the network’s winnings at Cannes this year. “In Mexico specifically, Vector B won a Silver Lion (the brand’s first Lion) for Grupo Bimbo - a Mexican company and one of the largest food processing companies in the world.”

Grupo Bimbo’s ‘The Greatest Guide’ was a campaign that helped small businesses and entrepreneurs in Mexico stand out from the sea of fast-food corporations. Using a first-of-its-kind, AI-driven branding tool and mapping technology, the project assisted over 8,000 companies.

“The campaign wasn’t about a commitment to a social cause, it was a real B2B project and we’re really happy with it,” says Tim. “Another one we’re really happy with is the ‘Gallery of Lies’, even though it was only shortlisted for a few categories. We were really excited about using AI for the first time!”

For Tim, what was especially interesting about McCann’s LATAM Cannes entries was not just the number, but the variety too. While they had projects that utilised innovative technologies, like the aforementioned pair, he adds that they also had “some amazing cases” which focused on aspects like social causes and purpose, “real old-school, beautiful, well-crafted film,” and even excellence in the outdoor medium. Speaking on the latter, he says, “[That’s] a campaign from Chile that’s won Gold - a project from an amazing creative director, [MRM Santiago’s CCO] Leo Chiesi.”

This OOH campaign is MRM Santiago’s ‘We Didn’t Write This Campaign’, created for dairy alternative brand NotCo. The project used words from the Chilean milk industry’s lawyers as copy and won a Gold and Silver Lion in the Print & Publishing and Outdoor categories respectively.

When discussing how McCann’s Latin American Creative Leadership Council selected this project and all the other hopefuls entered, Tim shares that the process involved “a lot of teamwork” across the international offices in the network. “We were shoulder-to-shoulder - not metaphorically - with our global executive creative director, John Mescall, and our chief creative officer from Europe, Adrian Botan. They were constantly helping us to improve the ideas and make the cases the best that they could be. These peers have a lot of experience and seniority, and they understand what to enter and what to not.”

On the flip side of things, Diana was part of the judging process at this year’s Cannes Lions, adding her insight for the first time to the Radio & Audio jury. Describing the experience as “spectacular,” she says that the process opened her eyes to how people’s different backgrounds influence their distinct ways of thinking, as well as providing more niche cultural knowledge around different topics and problems. However, she says, in the case of Radio & Audio, some topics are universal. 

“One of them is humour. When we were listening to a funny piece of work, everyone in the jury room was laughing and that’s a universal experience that connects different ways of thinking… Instead of believing ‘I think differently to another person’, I found that I could connect with the humour, the social responsibility, the empathy… these are universal topics that connect different countries.”

This cross-collaboration of different viewpoints is also something that both Diana and Tim recognise as a key tool outside of the jury room, when creating great work for clients. For instance, when developing the ‘Seasoned Declaration of Independence’ for Pollos Bucanero, the Colombian CCO says that she worked closely with European CCO Adrian Botan. “It was a great example of how a network can be successful. Regardless of its performance at Cannes, I loved the experience of having great conversations about how to improve the idea every day and night, because we had different daytime hours. We had to work a lot, but the work was very constructive and I’m very proud of the process.”

Tim agrees, “I’m going to use that perfect word, ‘proud’, to describe ‘Gallery of Lies’. As you know, McCann Worldwide is a collection of business units - Momentum does all the activations, MRM is about technology and innovation, Craft is our in-house production team, and Weber Shandwick is our important PR network. And with ‘Gallery of Lies’, everyone contributed.” 

He continues, “MRM designed the backend of the technology and the site, Momentum did the activation on the streets as part of the outdoor campaign, Weber did a great job on the PR to get us into the news and came up with the idea alongside McCann. It’s a very unique and prideful example of what all the different muscles of the network can do together and everyone contributed their best tools.” 

While some of these projects are centred on a wider societal purpose - be it preventing misinformation or helping Colombian farmers to earn a living - the CCOs say that there’s been a conscious effort to return at least some of their marketing to the roots of the business:  helping clients sell product. 

“We’ve tried to focus on real brands, real messages - but not forget the purpose either,” explains Tim, sharing some advice that McCann’s global CEO Daryl Lee gave to them. “He said, ‘Guys, let’s give each brand its purpose’... Because the brands can’t find it! They want to help the planet, win awards and do all these things, but they don’t understand where they fit in. So it would be great to give a brand their own purpose.”

From McCann’s perspective, Tim adds that he believes the network has struck a good balance between “amazing purpose-based cases” and projects more directly focused on helping its clients sell products, be it diapers, chocolate, cars, or otherwise.

“We need to remember that while we have to save the planet, we have to save the client too,” adds Diana. “Saving the client is the first step towards saving the planet. So, I really like it when I see ideas [at awards shows] that I have seen before in real life and that I’ve read and thought about. So, remember! We have to save the client before - or at the same time as - the world.”

Reflecting on the winners he had seen thus far, and the general gossip that spills out from jury room proceedings throughout the week, Tim also notes that he had picked up on a prominent trend at Cannes Lions 2023 - that juries were being strict when awarding purpose-based and social cause ideas. “They’re still there on the winners lists this year, but the juries have been more resistant to simply awarding purposeful ideas, so that they can better showcase other types of work.”

However, for their Latin American region, Diana says that there exists an “important issue to solve” which provides its own resistance between LATAM ideas and awards show gold. This, she believes, is that too few “big brands” operate in Latin America. “A big trend at Cannes is that the brands that usually win are the biggest ones - and we don’t have as many bigger brands,” although she does assert that this disadvantage also provides motivation to work on grand ideas for smaller clients too. “We have a lot of smaller brands who deserve great work that can win at Cannes. So, for me, the focus is on trying to demonstrate that little brands can produce great work and have good performances at Cannes. I really think that it’s not just the big brand work that deserves to win.”  

In complete agreement with his Colombian counterpart, Tim shares that another problem to solve for agencies in his region and elsewhere is the overcomplication of their communication, especially when it comes to entering case studies to awards shows.

“We can take too long to present an idea. We need to be more straightforward with the jury. The festival now allows you to add 15 extra seconds to your two-minute video case study, and everyone is taking advantage of that. But I think that’s a mistake. You shouldn’t need those additional 15 seconds.” 

Parting with some advice for those looking to enter next year and succeed with the juries at Cannes Lions 2024, he adds, “We need to be more aggressive and straightforward - the jury doesn’t have time in their after-hours judging. We have case studies where there is beautiful footage and amazing narratives and we get really involved in talking about that, whereas I think we need to be a lot more straightforward - to cut to the chase.”