So, how was it for you? Cannes 2024 is over, bar the think pieces (ha), and we now have a definitive list of the absolute best work created by the global advertising industry over the last year. The matter is settled. Done.
It’s not quite that straightforward, though. Is it? Campaign is assembling its annual accounts of the decision-making process from UK-based jurors. Several reflections reference how international-by-design juries can underappreciate and overlook brilliant, locally focused ads. Global accounts can frustrate creatives because output seeking to be understood internationally has an air of homogeneity. Yet the most anticipated awards festival increasingly advantages advertising that people everywhere can understand.
Like most things, there's a subcategory for that. But of the UK’s 90 Lions, three won as single-market campaigns (3.3%). They included golds for Channel 4 and 4Creative’s “Idents” in Film and British Airways “Windows” by Uncommon Creative Studio in Outdoor and bronze for VML’s “Waiting to live” for NHS Blood and Transport in Brand Experience & Activation. Globally, juries gave 22 Lions under the single-market campaign subcategory, out of 841 (2.6%).*
Now, moaning about jury decisions is hardly new. I’d imagine people were disgruntled that Chlorodont, an Italian toothpaste brand, won the first (then winged) Lion at the International Advertising Film Festival in Venice, Italy in 1954. And there are people in UK adland who are still not over Honda “Cog” missing out on a Grand Prix 21 years ago.
That said, some creative chiefs I regard highly have told me they view 2024’s crop of winners as the most surprising yet. This is not only about cool/clever/cunning ideas turning jurors’ heads despite being tangential to brands' and agencies’ revenue needs. That shape of work is still there, and the fact only a proportion of it is purporting to save the world does not allay those concerns. But the winners also reflect the make-up of the juries—now expanded in geography, experience and prior achievements—as well as the bureaucracy of the process and the business model of Cannes Lions (and many agencies).
Some jurors of recent years speak privately of being befuddled by the rules regarding how awards are administered. The shortlist they are presented with. Which jurors are allowed to bring work back into contention. The exact number of each subspecies of Lion they must give. Which pride of entrants they must come from. Granted, there are Cannes Lions people on hand to explain it all (and when there are over 26,000 entries, processes are necessary), but it can make the results something of a lottery.
But there will always be people plotting to outsmart the house. The independent agencies scouting for Lions to magnify their multiples. The holding companies hunting for meaty headlines for hungry investors. Campaigns for campaigns that cost more than the original. Creative superstars standing proud on a bedrock of beautiful case studies – although with the loose matter buried underneath the surface rather than above it. Grands Prix using examples for “illustrative purposes”. How quaint to imagine the images might be as they ran.
After switching between Venice and Cannes, the festival settled permanently on the Côte d'Azur in 1984. Eleven years later, Sir Frank Lowe caused consternation on La Croisette when he refused to award a Grand Prix when he was the Cannes Lions jury chairperson. Apparently, none of the 1995 crop was good enough.
The juries today do not have anywhere near that power. Cannes Lions is a mature business, with its own investors to feed. And it is too important to many of the international conglomerates and enfant terribles entering for success (or otherwise) to be left to the discretions of jurors. Or for some of the campaigns to be interrogated too hard. But there might be other ways to definitively determine the greatest work in the world.
Maisie McCabe is the UK editor of Campaign.
*Thanks to Campaign's data editor Elena Lewis for her help with the calculations.
