Cannes Jury Insights: Friday’s Lions

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“We’re not looking for sad stories, we're looking for real solutions that make tangible impact and systemic change," said Jean, explaining that 40% of her category’s criteria is weighted towards impact. And ‘tangible impact’ is exactly what the jury presidents for the Glass, Titanium and Sustainable Development Goals Lions were looking for. 

“The Titaniums are about ‘what more can our industry be?’, ‘how much further can we push?’ said David. “They’re more than ideas, they’re actually solving problems - emotional, physical, governmental problems.” These solutions can be for a wide range of stakeholders - a community, the planet and, perhaps most pertinently, for the client. In this vein, Bruno praised the Film category’s entrants for focusing on the clients' products within the work and how the films worked to convert viewers into customers. 

Evidenced by the Grand Prix-winning work ‘RIP Leon’, he said that he was especially impressed with the creatives at Apple, describing the work as “incredible, smart and surprising” for focusing on the iPhone and trying to convert, rather than raising awareness of an already ubiquitous brand - something that he says is what most of the brands he works with want.

Bruno also celebrated something of a ‘back to basics’ moment, highlighting the return of short formats - as most of the awarded work ended up being 30 seconds and shorter. As well as identifying a ‘come back’ for humour at this year’s awards, he added that simplicity was a very effective tool. He suggested that, while technique and craft elevate the creative, the idea alone - stripped of its added craft or production polish - can be enough for a film to score highly in the Film Lions, as long as the insight is powerful enough. Nowhere is this more relevant than with ITV x Calm’s ‘The Last Photo’ campaign, which Bruno’s jury awarded a Grand Prix also.

Developing from ‘tangible impacts’, many of the jury presidents on this panel and throughout the week singled out and awarded projects that prompted legislative changes for causes like sustainability. Social justice and more. Tea says that a draft law was handed to her as part of the judging materials for the Glass Lions, and that the jury was particularly favourable to projects that moved awareness into sustainable action. “Laws don’t end when the campaign ends,” she said, going on to discuss the “staggering achievement of the Glass Grand Prix-winner ‘Knock Knock’.

Although she added that it’s not something to be replicated without a similar long-lasting dynamic to the one cultivated between Cheil and the Korean government, Tea marvelled at the campaign which “developed something that will work, save lives, punish perpetrators and transform emergency services.” 

Similarly, Jean described her category’s Grand Prix winner, Mastercard’s ‘Where to Settle’ campaign as “beautifully accelerating the lawmaking process” and made a point of how well the campaign aligned with the brand’s ongoing commitment to financial inclusion.

Saying that a successful Sustainable Development Goals Lion entry must link a company’s belief with its behaviour, she described how the creative’s message and action should be reflected and “embedded” in the heart of the business’ strategy or the core of its purpose. “The work at the top makes a meaningful contribution to society, not just another brand gesture,” she said. “It’s a positive contribution from brands that see themselves as a citizen, as much as you and me. It’s a contribution to society enabling people, enabling action over awareness and a genuine commitment to build a meaningful outcome.”

Jean also said that these ideas have to be scalable, something that can be assisted by creative partnerships - with other agencies, production teams and the clients themselves. David asserted that these partnerships and collaborative ideas are not disposable and should be nurtured to protect the creative and the perceived value of the agency to a brand. 

He said, “I don’t want them thinking we’re going to be replaced by technology, I want them - when the shit hits the fan - to call their agency. You’re not going to call ChatGPT.” Of course, following the week’s trend, innovative technology was also discussed at length at this conference.

Describing the balance between creativity and technology, such as AI, as “a race against irrelevancy”, David said, “The more opportunities we have, the more problems we can solve and technology will help us do that. But we still need our critical thinking, imagination and audacity to do that. The machines can’t take over if we’re using the machines. We need technology to enhance our imagination, ambition and audacity.”

As this debate between AI, emerging technology and the human aspect of creativity seems to have been an omnipresent conversation during this week’s press conferences, LBB’s Ben Conway rounded off the press conference, asking the jury presidents how a balance is being struck between creativity and technology, and what the future of this ever-evolving dynamic will look like. 

“We gave all of our Grand Prix to technology ideas,” said Tea, “But in my jury, it never felt like the cart was leading the horse - it was work, no matter how technical, for and by humans.” She added that it has been “frustrating” to hear a contrasting narrative being propagated at the festival this year when “there’s so much amazing work going on that’s rooted in human ideas but using technology as a tool.”

Bruno jumped in, saying that the primary benefit of AI isn’t to produce ideas, but to reduce the time required for a project, allowing more topical and reactive work to be created. And picking up from his fellow panellist, David agreed that technology will increase the pace of creativity but warned that creatives need to be wary of not “surrendering” to it - which would bring “more mediocrity at pace.”

“I’m not worried about it wiping out the mediocre middle that is pervasive in our industry,” he said. “There’s a lot of stuff that is formulaic, average and bad, and generally, AI will do a better version of that.”

He concluded, “[New technology] will bring up best practices for everybody but it’s not going to create next practices or fresh practices. That’s the responsibility of the human and their imagination - and they can work together. The best ideas were made possible by technology but they weren’t technology ideas.”