1 in 10 Cannes Lions Winners Tapped into the Metaverse

11% of Cannes Lions 2022 winning work were metaverse-related, states the 'World-Class Lessons on Metaverse in Marketing' report by Kurio and Cannes Lions. The latest publication of the ten-year-old research program is the first one to study the role of the metaverse. The analysis consisted of the winners from all the 31 categories, totalling to 421 campaigns.  

“Metaverse took the marketing by storm. One in ten winners is a surprisingly high amount, considering that a year ago few of us had heard the term”, says Jari Lähdevuori, the creative director of Kurio and analyst-in-chief of the report. “It is worth noting, of course, that some of the forms of metaverse are familiar to us from already years ago.” 

Metaverse became a hot topic in October 2021 as Facebook changed its name to Meta. The word doesn’t yet have a clear definition. For the purpose of our analysis, we defined the word through the widely used concrete manifestations of the metaverse. Thus, all campaigns tapping into some of the following were dubbed metaverse-related: AR (augmented reality), VR (virtual reality), MR (mixed reality), NFT (non-fungible token), blockchain, gaming, avatars, cryptocurrencies, digital twins, and the metaverse itself. 

Gaming is the most widely used form of the metaverse in Cannes Lions winning work. 48% of the metaverse-related Cannes Lions 2022 winners tapped into gaming. Trailing behind were AR (24%), VR (17%), NFT (11%) and avatars (11%). 

”The findings suggest that you should dive into the metaverse through familiar things. A good example being the AR filters of various social media channels. Most of the AR-related winners were  done on Instagram, a channel well-known by most brands”, Jari comments. 

Social media and the metaverse worked in tandem in the winners of Cannes Lions 2022. The Social & Influencer Lions category had twice as many metaverse-related campaigns compared to all the winners. The category also had a markedly bigger share of work in which metaverse was at the core of the idea, not just a part of a whole. 

”To quote the expert interviews in our latest Social Media Marketing Trends report, social will be the gateway to the metaverse”, Jari summarises. 

Cannes Lions is the most significant competition of the marketing & advertising industry, and a leading festival on creativity. The 70th annual Cannes Lions was held on 20th – 24th June 2022. The World-Class Lessons On Metaverse in Marketing was released for the first time. It is part of the research program by Kurio and Cannes Lions, which has analysed the winning work through the lens of new trends since 2012. 

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