Published June 29
As AI, data and increasingly sophisticated marketing technologies dominate industry conversations, it would be easy to assume this year’s standout award entries for the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity would also be the most complex.
Instead, the opposite was true, according to Kantar’s Global Creative and Media Specialist, Duncan Southgate, who judged this year’s Media Lions short list.
“My big theme was simplicity,” Southgate told The Current. “When you’re wading through 233 [entries], the ones that really resonated with me were the ones where I could see the idea quickly. … I can see it’s impacted me instantly, and I can see how it had instant impact for consumers.”
For Southgate, the standout campaigns also shared another important characteristic beyond simplicity — scalability.
“We were looking for scalable ideas that weren’t just one-hit wonders, [ideas] that could be reused, recycled and expanded,” he said.
The quickest way to ‘wow’
Two Cannes Lions-winning campaigns that exemplified that approach were Dubai parking operator Parkin’s “Spots for Shops” and Peruvian broadcaster Latina TV’s “Prime Time 0.7%.”
Parkin transformed Dubai’s paid public parking spots into a marketing platform for small businesses. Recognizing that more than 90% of residents rely on cars and that paid parking often discourages people from stopping at local shops, the company introduced a campaign where drivers who spent money at participating businesses received their parking fees back as cash back through the Parkin app.
The idea went beyond the app, with parking bays outside participating retailers becoming media placements and location data prompting drivers to discover nearby businesses. More than 11,000 small businesses joined in, with Parkin reporting increases in app users and parking transactions.
Equally elegant was Latina TV’s “Prime Time 0.7%” campaign. Rather than asking advertisers to give up valuable airtime for charity, the broadcaster accelerated its prime-time programming by an almost imperceptible 0.7%, creating an additional minute of inventory without changing the viewing experience.
The newly created ad space allowed the Peruvian Cancer Foundation to run two fundraising ads which helped the charity exceed its fundraising target.
“You quickly got to the ‘wow,’” Southgate said of the campaign. “It wasn’t simple and boring. It was simple and inspiring and different.”
And the Grand Prix goes to…
At the other end of the simplicity spectrum sat this year’s Grand Prix winner from Uber Eats.
Its “Build Your Own Super Bowl Commercial” campaign transformed the Uber Eats app into an interactive experience, allowing fans to assemble personalized Super Bowl commercials. Behind the scenes sat a huge engineering effort, with more than 1,000 film combinations built into one of the world’s busiest commerce platforms during its biggest sales event of the year.
The idea was undeniably big and bold — and complex. For Southgate, though, the “keep it simple” principle stands, especially for brands with smaller budgets.
“Finding a big idea that you can get the machinery in your business around … to create a rich experience for people to participate in the brand … Uber Eats can manage it, they’ve got big budgets,” he said. “Modern marketing is complicated, but you can cut through with simplicity.”
For the most part, the ideas celebrated at Cannes may sit beyond the realities of everyday marketing. But advertisers at the festival aren’t necessarily looking to replicate solutions for their day-to-day marketing challenges, Southgate added.
“There’s a chasm between everyday marketing and what you see here,” he said. “But the advertisers I’ve spoken to are here for the inspiration.”
