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There was a lot to celebrate at this year’s Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, 70 years of marketing excellence for a start.
It was also a fantastic year for Unilever. Our marketing teams from across the globe brought home a total of 28 Lions, our strongest performance in over a decade.
We ranked No. 2 in the Cannes Advertising awards, with six Gold Lions, seven Silver and 14 Bronze and not forgetting Dove’s fantastic Grand Prix prize for its #TurnYourBack campaign, challenging the impact of social filters on self-esteem. We were also shortlisted 58 times.
As the dust settles and our global chief marketing officers return to the frontline, we asked six of them to reflect on the trends that shaped this year’s campaigns, what’s to come and the takeaways they plan to put into action.
What trends/changes in creative approach stood out this year?
Purposeful marketing is getting more scale and is much more creative. There was also an explosion in shortlists and winners from brands embracing social media and using influencers and clever data to get people to take action.
What trends will shape marketing in the year ahead?
Purpose will become more dominant, confrontational even, in today’s polarising world. There’ll be further convergence with retail media, the further rise of new media channels (eg: streaming services like Netflix and Disney) and more creators joining the party.
What’s your key takeaway from this year?
Creativity has no limits. We need to step up and use this to build emotional connection, stand out in culture and make our brands effortless to buy. Then our brands can truly become unmissable.
What’s the best thing about the festival?
It was a great honour to see Dove take second spot in terms of the number of awards won across the festival. Dove was shortlisted for 50 awards in total and converted 15 of them to Lions comprising: one Grand Prix win, three Gold Lions, four Silver Lions and seven Bronze Lions together with a Glass Lion. The wins are a testament to our belief in the power of creativity.
What trends/changes in creative approach stood out this year?
The critical importance of ‘Others say’ in engagement. Getting brands and products to be loved and endorsed by those whose voice counts today, ie: experts, creators, influencers – those who are trusted.
What trends will shape marketing in the year ahead?
The value of investing in long-term relationships with creators and influencers. As marketers, we need to be connecting personally with our partners and giving them a seat at the table. We also need to have courage to let them leverage their creativity and power to connect authentically with their audiences on our brand message.
What’s your key takeaway from this year?
The unique ability of influencers and creators to help built trust for brands. They can be amazing creative partners to engage consumers. It is important to embrace this phenomenon by creating communities of influencers and creators that share your brand’s belief system.
What’s the best thing about the festival?
The incredible diversity of work that was in the mix for the Health & Wellness Lions. The category covered work from make-up to pharma products from all mediums and channels and that was inspiring to see.
What trends/changes in creative approach stood out this year?
Entertainment and advertising working side by side, ensuring that people want to watch adverts that they might otherwise by likely to skip.
What trends will shape marketing in the year ahead?
Increasingly, we will see brands using the latest tech to move diversity and inclusion forward in product offerings. The See My Skin campaign from Vaseline is one example of how to address the lack of diversity in images that dermatologists use for diagnoses. It’s just one example of how smart tech combined with great creative can drive positive outcomes for different groups.
What’s your key takeaway from this year?
Marketing has made good progress in terms of diversity and inclusion, but it’s still a work in progress. Engagement can help us understand unmet needs from communities we are looking to reach, but brands need to make sure they incorporate those insights in an authentic way.
What’s the best thing about the festival?
Creativity and the power of disruption. The best brands are the ones that disrupt themselves before they get disrupted by others, and that thinking has a big role to play in the life of a CMO.
What trends/changes in creative approach stood out this year?
The growth of the creator economy. We have some iconic brands. People increasingly trust what others say about our brands much more than what we say about them, and we need to make that a bigger part of how we engage with consumers.
What trends will shape marketing in the year ahead?
Authentic value exchanges between brands and creators. This will see brands bringing genuine value to the lives of the creators and what their followers want. They may even go so far as building human and long-term relationships with them rather than just transactional ones.
What’s your key takeaway from this year?
A study by Nielsen shows that 47% of the ROI of a campaign comes from the quality of the creative. You have to make your work unmissable, ie distinctive, memorable and acted upon, and when rooted in purpose and done with consistency, this creates great brands that stand the test of time.
What’s the best thing about the festival?
Seeing a selection of the best marketing work from around the world and the opportunity to meet with media and technology partners to define how to better work together.
What trends/changes in creative approach stood out this year?
The use of new techs (generative AI, big data, etc) and ever-evolving media channels like TikTok.
What trends will shape marketing in the year ahead?
It was refreshing to hear from opinion leaders that humour/fun is becoming very important again to stand out in culture.
What’s your key takeaway from this year?
Keep on using happiness and humour. This is especially relevant for the Ice Cream category. We should not take ourselves too seriously.
What’s the best thing about the festival?
For me, it was the opportunity to showcase our new content partnership with TikTok for the #CleanTok community to the world’s marketers.
What trends/changes in creative approach stood out this year?
More campaigns harnessing the power of influencers to engage passionate social-first communities with brands.
What trends will shape marketing in the year ahead?
Smart data and insights being used to grow audiences.
What’s your key takeaway from this year?
How the scale and diversity of a trend can become a platform for an entire global marketing category.
Research shows that stereotypes are making Generation Z consumers feel unsafe on social media. We’re taking action to ensure the influencers involved with our brand partnerships reflect a more inclusive world.
Unilever and TikTok have announced a global #CleanTok partnership which aims to tap into the huge and fast-growing audience of people who are captivated by cleaning.
Congratulations to Dove, Vaseline, Sir Kensington’s, OMO and Hindustan Unilever for winning at this year’s International Festival of Creativity