Every year, the international festival of creativity known as Cannes Lions takes place in Cannes. Nearly 20,000 advertising works arrive from all corners of the globe to be judged by the international jury. Some 9,000 advertising professionals from all over the world take advantage of this opportunity to exchange ideas.
At Cannes Lions 2018, a large number of advertising films, communication posters, campaign titles, corporate marketing tools and many others were in the running. The aim was to win the jury’s favour.

On the programme for this communication festival

Cannes Lions is not just an awards festival. A wide range of themes were raised at this meeting of creative communications. Here are just a few of them.

How can brands improve their marketing and creativity to grow?

To answer this question, which is more of an observation, we looked at 4 major advertising companies. P & G, L’Oréal, Store No. 8 and Samsung.

What emerges from the various responses is that it is above all a question of transformation. How do you transform a customer relationship, how do you transform the marketing tools at your disposal, how do you transform creativity by raising the bar? And let’s not forget the technological transformation needed to make everyday life better for consumers.

Voice assistants at the heart of advertising

The arrival of voice assistants on the market, and Amazon’sAlexa in particular, has reshuffled the advertising deck. There is now talk of looking at marketing through the prism of voice. Predictions point to a clear increase in voice searches by 2020. Brands now need to incorporate this parameter into their marketing strategies.

Creativity at the service of customer relations

This theme of Cannes Lion 2018 was illustrated by the methods used by Apple to improve the customer experience in its stores. By getting ever closer to the customer.

With furniture retailer IKEA, it was a question of understanding how a kit furniture giant has managed to become a formidable platform for delivering personalised marketing content.

In all these cases, creativity is at the heart of the marketing strategy. Innovation enables us to constantly improve the consumer experience, and therefore the customer relationship.

Award-winning French agencies

A number of French agencies won awards at this year’s advertising festival. The French advertising agency with the most points was Marcel, a Publicis subsidiary set up in 2010. The creative agency won 14 awards, including 4 gold, 7 silver and 3 bronze, for a total of 118 points.

In second place among French advertising creatives was BETC, an agency founded in Paris in 1995. It won 15 Lions for a total of 85 points.

Further down the list was DDB Paris with 8 Lions for 32 points. Next came TBWA\Paris with 27 points and 5 Lions, and Herezie with 2 Lions.

Top French advertising campaigns

At the top of the list of French advertising campaigns was Carrefour‘s Black Supermarket, produced by the Marcel agency.

Next up was the Save Our Species environmental campaign run by Lacoste, via the BETC Paris agency.

The #Sharethelove anti-HIV campaign by AIDES came third in the French advertising rankings. The campaign was developed in collaboration with TBWA Paris.

DDB Paris signed The Gallery of Emerging Species for the children’s games brand Play-Doh.

And in 5th place, the Body can’t wait campaign for Handicap International, signed by Herezie.

See the Grand Prizes at Cannes Lions 2018

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