How This Year’s Cannes Showed the Power of Closing The Creative-Media Gap

Credit: AXP Photography, via Unsplash

So, you’ve just returned from Cannes. You’ve seen some outstanding, mind-bendingly good ideas. But did you spot where creativity is really thriving?

Look a little closer, and you’ll notice that lateral thinking in comms and media is playing an increasingly pivotal role, not just the classic conceptual idea doing the heavy lifting within a templated media plan.

Let’s be honest: the idea of integrated agencies isn’t new. Many have grown, built, or acquired capabilities across the marketing spectrum to push the age-old line: “It only works if it all works.” True, but overused, and often resulting in blurred lines and bloated processes.

What’s clear is this: there’s still an awkward tension between the need and the ability for brands to take creative risks. Brands open to creative risk are 33% more likely to experience long-term revenue growth, yet only 13% describe themselves as 'creative risk-friendly'.

Despite agencies being set up to support creativity across the board, too often there’s a disconnect between creative and media, a 'creative-media gap' that is present before the campaign even launches.

The industry loves to talk about 'building bridges' between creative and media. But that assumes they’re separate. The truth? Creativity is a blend of lateral thinking applied to proposition, time, place, and channel. It’s a holistic challenge. If you’re ‘building bridges’, then we must assume things are already separate or worse - disjointed, and therefore dear reader: you’re already on the back foot.

So how do we close the gap?

There’s no silver bullet. But the beauty of creativity is that it can blossom at any point. Three standout principles from this year’s Cannes Media winners offer a blueprint for closing the creative-media gap:

1. Handpick Media Placements Inspired by the Creative Idea

You’d think this would be a given. But uninspired media plans still too often default to templated, number-led strategies.

Take the HEINZ ‘Can’t Unsee It’ campaign. Deadpool and Wolverine were paired with their condiment counterparts (Ketchup and Mustard) in a brilliantly simple creative concept. Media could’ve gone broad and bland. But instead, the creative-media gap was closed, and integration prevailed.

Launching on Marvel’s official YouTube channel with a version of the trailer that flashed split-second blips replacing the on-screen characters with the colour matched condiments was later supported by the same concept in strategically selected out-of-home and cinema ads, making it impossible to see the on-screen duo without thinking of them as HEINZ doppelgangers. 

The result? 1.58 billion earned impressions and a 2.9% and 8.5% sales lift for Ketchup and Mustard respectively.

2. Tailor Creative to Media Consumption Behaviour

'Attention is scarce' might be the most overused line in strategy decks. But turning that truth into an advantage? That’s rarer.

Despite the copyright controversy that has heightened following Budweiser’s Cannes Lions Grand Prix win, they did discover that music fans only need one second to recognise their favourite song. So they created one-second ads featuring just the opening notes of iconic tracks, challenging fans to guess them.

Deployed across social, this could’ve resulted in a dreaded swipe-past moment. But by embracing the brevity of the format and leaning into audience behaviour, it was simply unskippable. It triggered music fans to rewatch every ad multiple times to guess the song.

With media insight fuelling the creative, the campaign delivered 68 million impressions and outperformed video view benchmarks.

3. Innovate with Media Partners to Stand Out

Media partners want to go beyond spot and space. Briefing them early, sharing the creative challenge, not just the media buy - can elevate an idea.

Kleenex wanted to connect with movie lovers before emotional movie moments. They didn’t just use IMDb to buy spot and space in and around tear-jerking movies, they partnered with IMDb to create The Kleenex Score, a unique rating system that helped viewers gauge a film’s emotional impact before hitting play.

By collaborating from the outset, the campaign reached 251 million people across social and drove a 14.4% sales increase.

What This Means for Brands

At Trouble Maker, we don’t 'bridge' creative and media - we blend them. The word ‘bridge’ is banned. Not a Clifton Suspension or Golden Gate in sight.

Our creativity fuels our amplification approach - whether it’s paid media, PR, influencers or organic social - our channel-agnostic insights spark creative ideas, and vice versa. It’s not a handover. It’s a handshake.

We believe that closing the creative-media gap is what gives brands the confidence to take creative risks-and the clarity to make them count.

That’s how we launched the world’s first AR-enabled training kit with Man City and Asahi Super Dry - making the less desirable training kit as newsworthy to fans as the home kit. It’s how we launched the most talked about F1 partnership on the grid between Scuderia Ferrari & Peroni - using easter eggs to drive a fan powered amplification plan. We love putting the groundwork and rigour in to give clients at all levels the confidence to be brave by mapping ideas alongside the touch-points.

That’s why we run Trouble Maker Creative–Media Workshops: to bring these principles to life, whether you’ve got a live brief or a blank page; whether you’re shooting for a Cannes Lion or IPA Effectiveness Award. Or whether you just want to build your brand and grow your sales away from the limelight of awards. Because when creative and media are aligned from the start, the work doesn’t just work, it resonates.

Let’s close the gap.