Strong insights, purposeful positioning and offering consumers a total experience are the key components of a Cannes Lions winning campaign. Getting all three right means a brand will not just win awards but perform better, according to brand consultancy Effective Brands.
Speaking at Cannes to present a report on what the agency and client landscape will look like in 2020, Effective Brands outlined what sets campaigns that win at Cannes apart from those that don’t fare so well.
Analysing winning campaigns, the company also attempted to plot the correlation between success at the Cannes Lions and revenue growth.
Insight is the first component but it shouldnt be confused with data becasue the two are different, said Marc De Swaan Arons, founder of Effective Brands. He trotted out the line “Big data is like high school sex. Everyone’s talking about it but not really doing it, and if they are, they’re doing it badly.” Insight though, was a different kettle of fish.
Purpose behind the brand is the common thread running through previous Cannes Lions winners such as Dove’s Real Beauty and Nike’s Nike Plus and Fuel projects is a “dramatic clarity about what it is they are helping the consumer with” said De Swaan Aarons, adding that there is always a positive correlation between a high purpose and high performance, meaning having a purpose “makes business sense”.
For companies like Unilever and Nike who have a history of success at Cannes, “the CEO talks like the CMO” which shows that the brand concept is married to the purpose and is bedded from the top of the organisation down.
The final element is giving the consumer a total experience – not just a burst of brand messaging. For Nike, it was creating a host of connected services and tools beyond its products that people could connect to. For Real Beauty it is things like its self-esteem program that runs in schools and is designed to make teen girls more aware of the way media presents women and beauty to change their perception.
The study claims to be the biggest ever marketing leadership study taken, surveying 10,000 marketers globally.
The company presented early findings of the report at Cannes last year and suggested that marketers that outperform their peers are those working with more than five agencies and who have integrated big data into the way they work - but not at the expense of creativity.
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