To Cannes, or not to Cannes? That is the question!
After many years of heated debates on LinkedIn, on the value and relevance of Award shows, 2025 is shaping up to be the year for a final reckoning. Never before has there been so much discussion around the validity of the case studies which went on to win awards at Cannes, with even aspersions of fraud making the news. This is not new, as apparently questions on the business impact of award winning campaigns have always been asked, like this (LINK). While there is a lot of negative posts and diagnosis of what went wrong in 2025, surprisingly or not so surprisingly, I am not seeing any defense from the organizers, nor from any of the actual award winners who are now in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons (though 3 awards have apparently been withdrawn).
A while back, I was reflecting on what we could learn from the broader advertising awards industry. Beyond the actual physical events which are attended by a small minority - there is an industrial scale process that plays out behind the scenes. It starts from thinking about what is worthy of submission, then submitting the entry with forms thoughtfully filled out justifying the case with evidence, then comes the judging - all of which should account for more than just the shiny trophies handed out. Should we not expect there to be an impact that transcends beyond the award events, and encompass the rest of the marketing and creative teams in the respective organizations?
Essentially, should this effort not help better the quality of the remaining 99.99% of ads, which do not even get submitted for awards, but are the foundation of the entire advertising industry?
And this self-reflection was driven by the fact that while it is great to read the case studies on the award winners, I struggled with unpacking what I would do differently in my work. What could I learn from an award winning campaign, that would enable me to make my next campaign better? This could be along any number of different vectors like - how to arrive at a compelling creative idea, how to craft a compelling narrative to land the idea, what media choices to make to set the campaign up for success and so on and so forth. But all the case studies seem so custom fit to a specific Brand or Business, that transference of knowledge seems impossible. And more frustratingly, the examples seemed to exist in a parallel universe - where the rules of creative best practice and media deployment - everything we have been told drives campaign impact, does not seem to matter.
I fundamentally believe that this disconnect - of what we know and have been told drives advertising impact versus what we see showcased in the award functions - is the reason why many of the award winners look like they were created solely for the purpose of the awards showcase. They do not seem to have been tested in the real world context of diminished attention spans and low view-thru rates. There is excessive focus on one aspect of what makes advertising effective - that of the craft in making the ad film, usually a glossy high production value, long duration masterpiece, that leaves us with more questions - around the genesis of the idea to start with and/or the media plan that enabled discovery, engagement and thereby resulted in positive business outcomes.
The analogy that best describes this is - the campaigns showcased as case studies in the Award functions seem like Renaissance Paintings hanging in a museum, while all other 'regular' campaigns, are more akin to an outdoor hoarding, amidst the dust and pollution of the real world. Taking the analogy further, a Renaissance painting is one that people are actively willing to engage with, which an Outdoor hoarding is one that is actively avoided, at best it exists in the peripheral vision, as people go about their lives.
By over-emphasizing the Renaissance-painting aspect of the campaigns, award functions are limiting their relevance and wider acceptance.
Potentially, as a means to address the naysayers, the last 2-3 years, there has been a concerted effort made at Cannes, to bring in dissenting voices. At Cannes 2025, there are a few that stood for me -
What all of these presentations have in common are two-fold -
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For any advertising campaign to be successful - as in positively impact the business - it requires the people it is intended to influence (the customers) to have an opportunity to see it, and engage sufficiently with it to understand the Brand's intent. Given people do not actively think about the Brands and products they buy and use, it is imperative that Brand advertising actively clamors for attention - as such majority of any brand's advertising and media budget will be on interruption ads. With interruption ads, the Brand has something to say - launch of a new product, superiority of their product over competition, what their product has that delivers a superior benefit - and they want people to know about it. TV ads, pre-roll ads on YouTube, the ever increasing sponsored posts in Facebook/Instagram/TikTok feed, the banner ads on every website, the audio ad in the podcast, the print ad in the newspaper/magazine, the out of home physical display at a bus-stop etc - they are all interruption ads. These are the most efficient formats in terms of cost of media (usually measured as CPM - cost per 000 impressions) and when done well, will also be effective.
The formula for doing Interruption advertising well, starts with acknowledging that avoidance of advertising is the norm. To be effective, interruption ads need to be designed considering the viewing behavior that is prevalent in each of the media channels. For example, with the advent of TikTok/Meta Reels/YouTube Shorts, people are no longer "scrolling", they are "flicking". With every finger-flick, a new video occupies the entire screen and any piece of advertising content being viewed in this context, has a very short view window (1-2s) to be deemed relevant and thereby get afforded a few more precious seconds of attention. All of the creative best practices defined by the platforms consider this, more details can be found in online resources, some of them linked below -
In summary, interruption advertising needs to have the following features - short-form, attention grabbing from second zero, the Brand and Product must be integral to the narrative and simple, single minded narratives that clearly communicate "what Brand, what product and what message".
But when you review the films showcased as case studies from the award shows, none of them comply with any of the recommended guidelines. The creatives that are celebrated seem to bend the rules of "advertising science", which runs counter to everything we know as best practice. And they also seem to deviate from all other Marketing/Advertising tenets that have stayed true for millennia - consistency of brand expression, presence and usage of Distinctive Brand Assets, working within the constraints of the media channel algorithms and so on and so forth. This by itself is not a problem - what it means is that, for these campaigns to have had a positive impact of the business - they needed to be supported with a different media model that lends itself to building awareness, discoverability and engagement. As opposed to Interruption campaigns, these need to be thought of as Seek-out campaigns - where the journey starts with a trigger, that makes people want to know more about something that the Brand has done recently.
Let us look at an example - The Nike 2018 campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick, is discussed in Marketing circles via the hero film that is 126s long (link). How did regular folks discover this long-form film for it to have had an impact on the Nike business? The launch of the campaign started with a tweet on Twitter (now X) (link). This led to a barrage of online and offline discussion/debate - including Donald Trump who responded to the tweet, it got picked up by news channels, people shared videos of burning their Nike shoes - all of which resulted in incredible word-of-mouth. When this happened, most folks would come to know that there is a Nike campaign that everyone is talking about and this would make them want to find out more about it. They then likely went to YouTube and searched for "recent Nike campaign". And from the search results which showed the film present on the Nike brand channel, ended up watching the 2min+ video. So, all the paid media, was working to drive interest and discovery of the hero film - the long-form video itself does not get pushed into people's FB/IG Feed or served as a pre-roll on YouTube that can be skipped in 5s. This is akin to trailers for movies - the short duration trailer is intended to showcase what the movie is about and generate sufficient interest, for people to want to watch the whole movie.
But this kind of campaign is the exception and has to be treated as such. This is a lean-in, actively engaged, high attention viewing, with the Brand already known. There is also one consideration around the types of stories that lend well to a Seek-out model. Just because brands have something to tell, does not mean people will want to watch the videos. A well designed trailer can only go so far. It still needs to be on a topic that resonates, ideally polarizes people, so there is discussion and debate (like the Nike ad). The vast majority of campaigns that a Brand would do, are not of this nature. They need to work despite facing passive, low attention viewing, that is brutal in how quickly content is rejected as not being relevant.
Summary
My fervent hope from all the discussions happening after Cannes 2025, is for a relook at the role of Marketing Awards - there is a little too much of elitism that permeates all of them. The campaigns which are celebrated in these events should be the bellwether of what is possible for the broader industry - and not just celebrations of the exceptions, which are inherently difficult to replicate and increasingly seem to be falsified.
The core tenets of good advertising have remained the same for millennia - content needs to catch attention, have the brand/product as the hero and seem relevant enough for the audience to be viewed for more time. With the changing media landscape, new ad formats, new media buying models and all the tech driven changes, these core tenets or WHAT MATTERS remain unchanged, while the HOW we execute them will need to keep evolving.
Remember - it is all relative. Every generation of marketers have struggled with the low attention given to advertising. This is not a new phenomenon of the hyperconnected, always-on, social media world we live in today - it is just that the scale has escalated.
STAY SAFE. STAY RELEVANT.
Nice read! Very insightful..