Cannes 2023
Creativity as a driver for business success: a recap of Cannes LIONS 2023
The Cannes Film Festival is a big deal. Full of A-listers (and Bs, Cs, and plenty of Fs I suppose) it takes place each May in the south of France and is where filmmakers push the limits of their craft. In 1954, the ad business started their own festival, which first switched annually between Venice and Cannes but ultimately settled in Cannes.
The biggest brands in the world – the likes of Google, Apple, Proctor & Gamble, AB Inbev, Spotify – compete for the LIONS awards, which are the top prize in marketing. 16,000 marketing professionals take over the Palais des Fetes and the beaches and harbor to compete, network, and take classes.
I went this year to take the CMO Accelerator course. There were 60 of us, and I was from the smallest and least-known firm in the room. At my table, the CMO of Pfizer told me how they were using AI, and the head of sports marketing from Red Bull talked with me about branding. An Italian who had just left her job marketing FIFA says she’s excited to give me all kinds of ways to leverage our soccer sponsorship. Our instructor was the former CMO of Proctor & Gamble, and one of our coaches has won over 200 LIONS in his career as CMO of the group owning Burger King and a ton of other brands, as well as serving at Activision and I think Unilever.
Your first question is, did my employer pay for my trip? No. I paid. Because I want to be the best CMO I can be.
Next is probably what did I learn, and why does it matter to you?
The answers are… far too much to share in this CMO Update, and… it matters because some of the biggest companies in the world were sharing their marketing strategies, tactics, and business results. I’m going to set up a time to share what I brought back as a Teams meeting, and I’m also glad to spend time with you or your teams to download my findings. But one stood out.
Companies that stand for more than their product grow faster.
To rewind a little, there are four parts to a marketing audience.
At the base is Culture. That is, it’s 2023, we are in the U.S., these are the conditions and the audience in which we exist. The culture.
Next is Consumer. Within that culture, who are the consumers of a given product or service? What do they want, and – vitally – what might they need, that they don’t yet know?
Then comes Category. That’s us plus whomever we see as competition. The gold medal, the cherry on the ice cream sundae of business, is to lead the category.
Finally, is Company. ‘Nuff said.
I’ll continue next CMO Corner with some interesting studies from a business school in the UK and from Bain and Company, but because everyone loves watching videos, I want to leave you with one video. The team behind this campaign came to the class, and there was not a dry eye in the room afterward. Because they – coming back to my thesis above – dared to stand for more than the product.
Instead, they looked at Culture. Consumer. Category. And by doing that, the company went from average sales numbers to leading the category. By daring to think beyond moving units off the shelf… they moved even more units off the shelf.