Laughing Lions: The Jury Are Seeing the Funny Side

System1, the Creative Effectiveness Platform, today revealed how the Cannes Film Lions winners from the US and UK score with the public. 2024’s winners saw a massive swing toward more humorous winners, which has driven a small uptick in the effectiveness of the award-winning ads.

The big trend in this year’s winners is the continued rise of humour as an element in ads. Cannes Lions winners in the 2010s were often known for promoting brand purpose in inspirational and heart-warming ads. Laughs were in short supply. But this year 75% of US or UK winners used humour, up from 52% in 2023. Purpose ads, meanwhile, have fallen out of fashion with juries, with only 13% of the winners fitting the description.

We saw this in the Silver Lion-winning 'Best Friends', from Uber One and agency Mother in the UK. The gently comical ad, in which Asa Butterfield becomes best pals with Robert De Niro based on their love of “eating food” and “going places”, scored 3.8-Stars, a solidly good Test Your Ad score.

As well as being funnier, the 2024 Lions winners were more international – 73% of awarded film ads this year came from outside the US and UK, compared to 51% last year. The top-scoring international ad was a five-Star Bronze Lion winner for Thai underwear brand Sabina. It’s also one of the funniest ads of the year, a farcical, blouse-ripping domestic drama that reflects the country’s changing social norms while also making audiences grin.

System1’s Test Your Ad platform tests consumers’ emotional responses throughout an ad, assigning creative a score of 1.0 to 5.9 Stars based on long-term brand-building potential. Ads that make people feel intense, positive emotions like happiness and surprise score high on the scale. Usually only 1% of ads secure a five-Star score.

From 2021 to 2023, the UK and US Lions winners scored a flat 2.1-Stars on average with the public – roughly in line with the average TV ad. In 2024, we saw a small rise in that average, to 2.3-Stars.

“Humour is firmly back on the advertising agenda and juries are taking note,” said Jon Evans, chief customer officer, System1. “We know that funny ads tend to be more effective, and it’s likely the increase in laughs is helping the Star Rating rise slightly. Now marketers and juries aren’t scared of making people laugh, the next step is to make sure the ad feels good too – in the US and UK we're seeing a lot of humour driven by awkward or uncomfortable situations which can leave viewers feeling uncomfortable too. There are so many other ways to get laughs – surreal ads, slapstick ads, and character comedy like that top-scoring Uber winner. Congratulations to the team at Uber and Mother for creating such an amusing an effective ad’’

To learn more about System1, visit here.