Cannes Lions has launched the 2020 festival with changes to awards.
The June 22-26 festival will have eight content themes and creative business transformation Lions.
Each theme is shaped around the most business-critical areas of branded marketing and communications.
The 2020 content themes:
- Creativity is the Business Growth Engine: explores the role of marketers to define how creativity can support both short-term activities and long-term brand equity to have a better level of influence in the boardroom.
- Creative Disruption in Commerce: trailblasers from brands and retailers will introduce pioneering forms of commerce (cashless, omnichannel, immersive) to promote better buying experiences.
- Post-Purpose: Brand Accountability and Activism -- the world’s biggest brands and agencies will discuss how they’re tackling critical global issues, from climate change to inequality.
- Your Brand is my Experience: brand and experience are now interlinked. Brands will discuss how they experiment with customer experience and improve the entire customer journey through seamless interactions.
- Looking to 2030: Making your Business Future-fit – in an era where we constantly learn, experiment and create the future, explore the new skillsets required and how to acquire and retain the world’s best creative and tech talent.
- Applied Creativity: When Data, Tech and Ideas Collide – experts will share examples of how to apply data and tech to enthral audiences, and brands will demonstrate how they harness tech to create lasting emotional connections.
- Storytelling at Scale – speakers will explore new creative dimensions in storytelling, across a range of platforms and formats, to gain attention and engage in the issues that matter, putting cultural relevancy at the forefront.
- Let’s Get Back to Brand – delves in to how creativity can help to curb the current obsession with clicks and impressions and focus instead on brand-building and long-term brand health.
Cannes Lions gathered feedback from more than 1500 customers and 100 in-depth interviews with CMOs, CEOs, brand leaders and strategists.
Charlotte Williams, VP Content, Cannes Lions, sys the themes explore the key concerns and opportunities for branded marketing and communications.
New for 2020, the Creative Business Transformation Lions are in response to the digital disruption that is affecting the way brands and businesses operate.
Work that wins at the Festival will demonstrate how creative change has been achieved across core business functions, delivering business impact and creating better customer outcomes.
This Award covers the breadth of new creative approaches that are used to create value and drive competitive advantage, alongside traditional brand communications. This includes the creation of new products and services, the use of technology and business design, and the reinvention of operations and customer experiences, in order to drive transformative change.
Susie Walker, Head of Awards, Cannes Lions: “We’re expecting entries to come from across in-house and agency teams that provide creative services, consultancy, experience or service design, new product development, innovation and digital transformation, in order to drive transformational change. We continually evolve the Awards, in line with the industry and the new Creative Business Transformation Lions celebrate creativity that can drive tangible business change.”
The Festival has also refreshed the PR Lions for 2020 to ensure the award accurately represents the current PR industry.
Cannes Lions undertook research with PR specialists globally to better understand their unique challenges and perspectives to ensure the PR Lions focus on the areas of creative work that the industry wants to be recognised for today.
All updates to Award categories will be available on the Cannes Lions website in November 2019.
Entries to the Lions Awards open on January 16.
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