The best ideas for campaigns are the simple ones and those that win at Cannes Lions also bring business accolades.
Rose Herceg, president ANZ, WPP, and Mike Rebelo, CEO Publicis Groupe ANZ, were both judges at Cannes Lions this year.
They were interviewed by Liana Dubois, CMO at Nine, on Talking Creativity, a special edition of Nine's podcast series, exploring creative minds at the Advertising Council Australia's This Way Up Festival.
Dubois: “What’s underpinning the kind of smartest campaigns that you’ve seen?”
Herceg said her shortlist was made up of beautifully simple ideas.
“All of them where if you’re not in this industry, you could have easily understood them,” she said.
“And the ones that won, particularly the Grand Prix winner, which was room for everyone for MasterCard managed to do several things in one campaign which was drive business metrics … revenue ... profitability ... change ... particularly with Ukrainians coming into Poland, so attacking xenophobia, knocking it on its head and then welcoming a million displaced people all in one incredible campaign.
“The ones that won did a lot but mainly they drove business success, which is thrill when you’re looking at creativity."
Dubois to Rebelo: What were some of the trends and insights you took out?
“It was a real honour to be involved in the creative effectiveness category because for me it’s really at the intersection of what we do for clients,” Rebelo said.
“It really is about the creative multiple that we can bring to business and drive drive change. And that’s what that category judges.
“You actually have had to have won at Cannes before you can enter effectiveness. So there’s a creativity filter already applied.
“The process is quite an enduring one. It starts about six weeks before Cannes. So we judged about 150 entries before we got there.”
This gave a shortlist of around 40, and then the judges spent two days in a room deciding on the awards. They looked at four criteria: Audaciousness, brave, causality, directional.
“The ones that won did all those four things and the Grand Prix went to Heinz and that was a five year campaign,” said Rebelo.
That showed a competitive category in decline, and how a product could change its fortunes by being very focused on its enduring equity and applying creativity to really show how product quality was superior. Reengaging love for the brand.
Hercerg said the best advice she got as jury president was that the category is a time capsule.
“When everybody else comes to apply in 2025 they look at all the winners (from now) and they get it,” she said.
“It’s like a shorthand to how good the work needs to be to win.
”And I think for our industry this year has been particularly strong because it was more than purpose.
“It was the business metrics and the success of creativity when driving a business forward.”
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