From AI and creativity to the potential of the women's sports arena and the need to protect – Cannes Lions winners made an impact across a diverse landscape this year. With Cannes Lions 2024 now officially wrapped, we explore the key themes and takeaways from this year's winners.
With guest speakers ranging from Elon Musk to Deepak Chopra, Cannes Lions 2024 was always set to generate a buzz.
But what really captured the hearts and minds at this year's advertising Olympics?
From AI-enabled creativity to the opportunities in women’s sports to the power of protection, we explore the insights behind the 2024 Grand Prix winners.
Collaborative progress
AI existentialism has been at the heart of 2024 discourse. Cannes Lions 2024 winners successfully managed to acknowledge fears around AI, and reassure their audience of the value of the ‘real’.
Pedigree won both a Gold Lion and the Outdoor Lions Grand Prix for ‘Adoptable.’ Using AI, the campaign ensured that all digital ads featured images of real, adoptable dogs. Taking basic pictures of shelter dogs, the brand uses machine learning to turn them into professional quality images and insert them into adverts. Viewers could then access a web page with more information and once adopted, the dog is dropped out of the media rotation.
This is a campaign that plays directly into a key theme we saw from our Expert Outlook 2024 research around the idea of ‘Anti Human’ – people do feel concerned about AI, but they are willing to embrace it when it supports collaborative progress.
AI was also used to support a sense of collaborative progress in the Grand Prix film winner campaign produced by Prodigious: Orange’s “WoMen’s football”. In the campaign, AI deep fakes recreated women’s football as a men’s game, before revealing the real stars at the end of the spot.
The AI here was used to challenge in-built bias in the game and force audiences to rethink their attitudes to women’s football. Again, this was a great example of where creative AI can be used to improve our lived experience IRL.
Reality play
Meanwhile, Xbox leveraged the sense of essential escapism that many are feeling and transformed it into a moment to have more agency in real life. Acknowledging the skills that people develop while playing games, and the idea that many fans feel they could outperform the professionals, Xbox invited one user to apply their tactical flex IRL for Bromley FC.
The campaign has paid off, receiving 1.5 billion impressions and leading to a 190% uptick in Football Manager gamers, as well as being awarded a Direct Grand Prix at Cannes.
A new approach to sustainable narratives
As a topic of interest, sustainability is taking a beating right now. Even as the climate reaches record temperatures, people are unmotivated about what to do next. Over the last year, people have switched off and are experiencing climate fatigue, with some opting out of the climate conversation altogether.
Our macro behaviour on Eco Imagination identified the need for a new and more creative narrative around the climate, one that leverages technology to re-engage and re-inspire people with the crisis at hand. It is this energy that Coca-Cola successfully tapped into as it scooped the Print and Publishing Grand Prix for its ‘Recycle Me’ campaign.
Though not without criticism, images of the brand's logo crushed in various ways cut through greenwashing fatigue by shifting the aesthetics of environmentalism, and encouraging a global effort to make recycling a daily habit in a punchy new way.
Elsewhere, Renault’s standout campaign ‘Cars to Work’ also picked up the Creative Commerce and Sustainable Development Goals Grand Prix. This campaign was interesting because it challenged the narrative that we should be using cars less.
Instead, the campaign shows how cars can solve employment challenges for those living in mobility deserts, and centres the car as both a metaphorical and literal vehicle for personal progress and development.
Protective power
The importance of youth culture showed up slightly differently among Cannes Lions 2024 winners. With concerns around mental health and wellbeing at an all-time high thanks to correspondingly high rates of loneliness and depression among Gen Z and even Gen Alpha, brands that put care front and centre really landed.
For example, Dutch telecoms company KPN – in partnership with Dentsu Creative Amsterdam – won the Creative Strategy Grand Prix at Cannes. Developed as part of the company's ‘Better Internet’ platform, the campaign tells the moving story of one young girl and the detrimental impact a breach of her privacy had on her life.
Alongside the ad, the company launched an original song with lyrics based on real people’s stories that achieved viral success. As a result of the widespread coverage, the matter of online shaming was debated in the Dutch Parliament, resulting in the Dutch Sexual Crimes Act being updated to class the non-consensual sharing of intimate photos as a sexual offence.
Also focussing on the need to support the next generation, the UN Women’s Child Wedding Cards campaign won the Health Grand Prix for Good at Cannes. Aiming to inspire lawmakers in Pakistan to move the minimum age of marriage to 18, the organisation leans into radical transparency and emotive imagery to demand change from policymakers. The organisation sent the cards directly to lawmakers, and as a result, the issue was debated in parliament.
In recognition of the change the campaign achieved on a real-world level, the organisation received the Health Grand Prix for Good at the Cannes. “This campaign demonstrates the true power of creativity: the ability to deliver a highly impactful message without relying on massive budgets and an emphasis on emotional voltage,” says Ali Rez, regional chief creative officer at IMPACT BBDO.
Pro-unity narratives
In a record election year, with 1.5 billion people headed to the polls, polarisation and social fragmentation were always going to be front of mind for people and advertisers alike.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung took home the Industry Craft Grand Prix at Cannes for its 100th edition featuring holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin.
A collectivist and inclusive vision was also at the centre of McCann’s campaign for Mastercard ‘Room for Everyone’. Following the refugee crisis created by the war in Ukraine, the campaign saw Mastercard use payment and footfall data to unlock opportunities for Ukrainian and Polish businesses to work effectively together, supporting a new revenue strategy for everyone.
