Marketing trends for the 12 months ahead: reflections from Cannes 2016
Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is at the cutting edge of the marketing and media industry — defining the trends for the year ahead so here’s a run down of the key trends from 2016
For a first-timer, it’s impossible not to be blown away by Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Tens of thousands of people from all corners of the marketing world descend on the French Riviera to beaches and hotel frontages along La Croisette transformed into the places to be during the week. It’s all in celebration of creative brilliance. Highly-prized Lions awards are dished out and for one week only the 1 miles stretch becomes the epicentre for conversations with business contacts — old and new. It’s a true spectacle and one that Team Openr were immensely proud to be part of having won the Lions Innovation Start-up Competition.
It’s easy to feel a little squeamish at how lavish this event is — if nothing else the Daily Mail yacht will have you raising an eyebrow. Fortunately, the epic work on show at the awards and the topics debated by the keynote speakers are a firm reminder that Cannes is an event at the cutting edge of the marketing world. This is creativity and innovation at its best. Winning a Lion is the crème de la crème of the industry, and seeing the work truly inspires ones belief in the industry as a whole. So yes it’s extravagant — but it is in celebration of brilliance; it inspires brilliance — so long live the celebration.
The awards are a sensory overload — one minute you’re laughing, next nearly crying, as the films for the Gold winner and Grand Prix winner are played. We selected the most inspiring wins we saw on the award night for the Innovation, Mobile, Media & Cyber Lions and featured them here. The short list includes US companies closing on Black Friday; CCTV thievery being featured in adverts; Manboobs fixing breast cancer check awareness; and blood donor banks being filled in countries with a national shortage. Across cause-related and commercial brands the work was brave, bold and executed brilliantly. Watch the films and read on to get my take on the trends that will dominate the industry for the next 12 months based on the topics and trends presented and debated at Cannes:
Cause vs commercials
There was some chatter at Cannes about whether charity and commercial work should be judged separately, since charity entries can always tug at the heart strings more easily. It’s true a number of our shortlisted Lions were ‘doing good’ for a charity or cause-related client, but several had a cause sewn into the creative for a commercial brand. It’s truly inspiring to see marketing campaigns making a real difference to people’s lives (see the Lions winners tackling breast cancer and blood donation here), but equally impactful are REI’s #OptOutside and Unilever’s #Sharetheload. So I’d argue that the creative challenge really comes alive with a mix of the two.
This idea was cemented when I saw Keith Weed CMO of Unilever speak at Cannes about the Future of Brands. We are in a new world of consumer engagement — one where brands have nowhere to hide from feedback and authenticity is paramount. Talking of his career turning-points, Will Smith summed it up “That smoke and mirrors in marketing is over. It’s really over. People are going to know really quickly, and they’re going to know globally, whether your product is keeping its promises”. Based on this premise, Weed defines the future of brands as “In” [I to the power of n] where I is Individuals, Influencers, and crucially Impacts. Unilever’s so-called ‘sustainable-living’ brands like Ben & Jerry’s and Dove are leading the way on Impacts — weaving a cause into the very core of their brand and- more interestingly it is delivering a strong commercial result. This was certainly clear with REI’s #OptOutside where their bold ban-black-Friday act was immensely true to their brand.
VR is actually making a difference in real life
It doesn’t take a genius to work out that virtual reality would be winning awards this year after it dominated so heavily as ‘the next big thing’ at Cannes in previous years. But, its recent explosion into the mainstream means that it is finally kick-starting an entertainment revolution.
Now I’m a bit of a cynic when it comes to VR. Frankly I think you look a bit silly with your VR visor on, and would rather do experiences in the real world. Or perhaps I just don’t have the vision to truly capture the implications of VR for the future. Then I saw The Field Trip to Mars and I got it. It brings VR into the real world, as did the Lions winning New York Times work too. Now VR is having an impact — pushing publishing forward and defining education for the future.
AI is the new VR
Inevitably, AI [Artificial Intelligent] took centre stage this year with a lot of focus on all the opportunities it presents to bring greater efficiency to our chaotic modern world. Wired’s co-founder Kevin Kelly predicting it would “launch the second industrial evolution”. The trick for all of us therefore is embracing these technologies instead of resisting them, which isn’t always easy when there is so much fear of robots replacing humans in the long term. Emotional intelligence — and therefore creativity — then becomes the last frontier for our lowly race — and even this was debated in the panel called ‘Will a Robot Win a Lion?’. A debate fuelled by Lions winning The Next Rembrandt where an immaculate portrait was painted by AI (see it here).
Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt believes that in time AI could tackle global problems like climate change and population growth but doesn’t envisage it would be capable of independent creativity or consciousness. Reminding us that people would always have the ability to turn it off [what a relief!]. One thing’s for sure, it remains a controversial topic and — like VR before — it’s only just begun. AI is already starting to improve the scale and impact of marketing, especially by working with customer data. There are smart tools delivering personalised experiences to answering live chats, so it’s one to watch.
Bold simplicity
There was a resounding trend that ran through the Lion winning campaigns — simplicity. The stand-out winners were all such acutely simple ideas, that were executed brilliantly. And this isn’t just creativity this is strategy and implementation. Netflix’s FU2016 would not have worked without the strategic planning that enabled it’s explosive launch at a critical time. REI’s #OptOutside idea could not have been implemented without the strategic alignment of the brand and the trio of agencies (Venables, Bell & Partners, Edelman and Mediavest/Spark) all working collaboratively. In fact, #OutOutside won the coveted Titanium Lion and when jury president Sir John Hegarty of BBH was asked how much idea vs. execution went into the jury’s decision to award, he said, “It was not only taking a profound idea, but it was executed in a way that really touched people. We really were looking for a combination of both idea and execution.” Take heed and go create.
Earned media is being taken seriously
An overwhelming majority of the case study submissions from winning Lions championed the earned media results their campaigns had achieved. In fact, I’d go as far as to say they hung on them — huge amounts of column inches and social media reactions. But this was not about impressions — this was about impact. In this world of consumer transparency and authenticity the holy grail now is genuine consumer reaction on social and delivering genuine news to the headlines. #Hastagforlife and Check it before it’s removed (both included in our shortlist) could not have succeeded without inspiring social interaction at significant scale. Netflix’s FU2016 would have been a shadow of its success had the news not reacted as they did to the news hijacking events that BBH New York delivered.
In a world where consumer reaction is now all that truly matters earned media is having its day and it’s why we’re seeing more and more brands use Openr on their press and earned media to amplify it further. Earned media is no longer the poor cousin — it is the centrifugal force for campaigns so the focus has shifted to emphasising that.
Surely ad-blocking was a hot topic?
Sure ad-blocking was everywhere. It was featured by everyone from Piers Morgan to Iggy Pop. But isn’t it at every marketing and media event at the moment and are we any closer to solving the issue? The debate had moved from simply talking about the problem to looking at solutions though. Everyone seems aligned that the technological arms-race (blocking software then anti-blocking software) is not the solution. The solution is eradicating bad ads according to the Cannes masses. That makes sense from the creative thought-leaders of the world — but I suspect we have such a long way to go to regain consumers trust since they feel they’ve been bombarded with a growing volume of irrelevant and intrusive ads. It was widely acknowledged that targeted ads can evoke positive responses by driving up relevance, but only if the industry raises its game. Watch this space.
Tech vs. creativity
All this talk about relevance and ads targeting gets us back to the oft debated topic of tech vs. creativity, human’s vs. algorithms. Many would blame the state of the nation in advertising on targeting algorithms (or poor ones) — with loose targeting and incessant retargeting causing that consumer backlash. Silicon Valley think of algorithms as the big heroes for the future, but they are undoubtedly only part of the solution but not the whole.
Contagious and Razorfish proved this with their keynote Cracking the Code of Creativity where they reported back their findings having tried to turn winning a Cannes Lion into an algorithm. Trawling through 15 years’ worth of Cannes Lions data they sought trends that might create a sort of ‘paint by numbers’ formula for future wins. On a similar vein, The Next Rembrandt clearly showed it was possible to recreate art with an algorithm. However, it cannot be done. There were many entertaining trends in the Contagious data — did you know you have more of a chance to win if you’re from New Zealand or called Marcello(!) but without human creativity and emotion there is simply no magic.
The new art therefore is when technology is combined with brilliant creative brains — and that’s when you get things like Safety Truck (Samsung, 2015), Slow Down GPS (IF Insurance, 2016) and Brewtroluem (DB Breweries, 2016).
And finally…
Of course the Cannes Lions are never without a little bit of controversy too: Two themes stood out here, Gender and rogue award entries; and in fact one managed to do the double — hitting both of these. An app designed by Grey Digital I Sea won a Bronze Lion by claiming to scan the sea for refugees but it was disqualified for not being live despite the creators saying the app is still in testing.
Meanwhile, the double-whammy offender was Bayer who picked up a Bronze Lion for Don’t worry babe, I’m not filming this.mov aspirin campaign. It was loudly called-out as both sexist and sexually aggressive, and then the creators AlmapBBDO withdrew the work (it was entered by the brand) claiming it hadn’t actual run live anyway hence falling into the ‘just for the awards’ rogue entries. To top off the gender debate there was also the Cannes Party invite seeking ‘Attractive Females Only’, which got a severe (and deserved) bashing.
I’ll be diving into many of these topics in more details in the weeks to come — so keep an eye out.
Christina is co-founder and CMO at Openr, the new content-sharing tool that is all about engaging the engaged. Social and content marketers use it to add a message with a clear call-to-action to all the content that they share — on social, on email, even via paid-for distribution — unlocking the right action, at the right time, with the right audience. Christina spent much of her career managing and growing FMCG brands at Nestle and Robinsons, and then turned her hand to young start-up brands, and has never looked back since. Her first marketing technology business was acquired in 2015; and today she spends much of her time focusing on the growth of her latest, Openr. As well as this she teaches Entrepreneurial Marketing for University College London; is a start-up mentor; and can be found speaking and writing for various industry events and publications.
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