As the sun goes down on another year’s Cannes Lions, we reflect on the in 2024 as uncovered by a survey of nearly 3,000 creatives and marketers by Lions Advisory.
“There’s a communication breakdown,” says Spencer Fox, SVP, business lead at Lions Advisory, the consultancy which conducts the survey annually and describes itself as "a transformation partner for companies on their journey to creative effectiveness".
The Lions Advisory finds that, although the majority of brand marketers want to push creative boundaries, conservative leaders make them feel like they can't. And even if brands believe the relationship with their agencies is positive, agencies report a growing tension.
Yet these strains on creativity come at the same time as predictions of increasing marketing investment: 51% of brand and agency respondents anticipate stronger growth this year.
“This is a unique window into the global creative landscape and what we’re seeing is that, although the sentiment is outwardly optimistic, inwardly the industry is at odds,” Fox says. “There’s optimism around progress and investment but tensions that need to be worked through if we’re going to realise the potential of creativity as a growth driver.”
Given that Lions Advisory figures show brands which predict higher growth for 2024 are six times more likely to prioritise creativity and put more investment into brand building (with a marketing spend 4.6 times higher than in 2023), there’s “consistent evidence for the business case for creativity,” Fox adds.
We canvas the wisdom of five of the 2024 Cannes Lions jury presidents for their advice for agency peers and brand partners on the issues raised.
Here’s what they have to say:
ON RELATIONSHIPS
Advisory's State of Creativity research identified emerging tensions within pivotal relationships, notably between clients and their agencies. Some agencies feel they are considered service providers rather than valued partners.
What are your observations on this dynamic? And how do you ensure the relationship between client and agency leads to the best creative possible?
Film Craft Lions jury president:
Prasoon Pandey, ad film maker, Corcoise Films, India
"In my experience, the most stunning creative solutions happen only when a client-agency relationship goes way beyond formal terms like ‘valued partners’ and ‘briefing presentations’. They need to become great friends, meet even outside the confines of ritualistic board rooms, have a drink together, and get to know each other’s aspirations and also each other’s fears. And this needs to be done more one-to-one between the team leaders, because if you call entire teams together, it ends up becoming yet another ritual.
"When one becomes that open with each other, the client is able to slowly figure out how to excite the creatives and get the best out of them, and the creatives are able to figure out how best to stir the client’s imagination and be able to dream together. On the other hand, if you realise that you just can’t be friends, then best to move on. There is no shortage of either clients or creatives in this world. A campaign is not an end in itself, you want to be able to create enough magic together."
Creative Commerce Lions jury president:
Amy Lanzi, CEO, Digitas, North America
“At Digitas, we bring our core values to our client relationships every day: fearlessness, generosity, and inventiveness. When we operate with a sense of creative generosity, we find that clients are open to new ideas, bending preconceived boundaries, and entering conversations that help connect creativity across their consumers' networks.”
Creative Data Lions jury president:
Rose Herceg, country president, WPP, Australia & New Zealand
“A relationship, like any in life, needs to be shaped. How will we interact? Do we trust one another? How honest can we be? How much do we share? And this final question, which in my view defines all others: are we on the same side? When clients and agencies realise they are fighting the same battle - growth and sales - and they are in a foxhole together, then they can get on with the job. Delivering growth in an economy with more competition than ever before takes extraordinary creativity. It takes a herculean effort and commitment to innovation and imagination. It also requires clients to be decisive. And spectacularly lateral.
"Once clients and agencies understand that the enemy isn’t within but outside, then the job is much easier. If it means holding a relationship summit to define these rules of engagement, then have the summit. Get it down on paper, agree it, ratify it and then get to work. Together."
Print & Publishing Lions jury president:
John Raúl Forero, president & chief creative officer, DDB, Colombia
“Personally, I have never shared the sentiment that clients do not allow agencies to be creative. In more than 30 years, I have found the vast majority of clients do allow creativity—creativity that they need.
“Agencies need to understand that the first step to achieving good creativity with a client is not to start with creativity. It's to gain their trust. Listen to them, go out into the streets, understand their true needs, and focus creativity on their real pains and opportunities through collaborative work with them.
“It's not about saying, "See you in three weeks and I'll show you the campaign you need." It's about working in parallel with them, day by day, and building a relationship of trust. When that happens and clients feel part of the process, they will approve great ideas, that's for sure.
“I say this from personal experience, based on results. DDB Colombia is among the top agencies in the Warc creative and effectiveness rankings. Why? Because we understand that creativity must be accompanied by good business results. This not only consolidates the trust in the client-agency relationship but also allows the client to understand from their own experience that well-focused creativity achieves great business results.
“Now, there are also some fearful clients. That is a reality. With them, you have to follow the same process but step by step. Agencies must understand that not all clients are willing to take risks. And that's not bad.
“You can play hard with clients who take risks. And with those who don't, do a serious and professional job, and that's it. It's not a big deal.”
Industry Craft Lions jury president:
Kalpesh Pantankar, chief creative officer, Leo Burnett, United Arab Emirates
“The answer to this cannot be absolute. It is unique to every agency. In fact, even within a single agency, the relationship with one client may differ from that with another. But I don’t believe any client in the world would say no to a partner who is bringing real value to the table. So it’s up to agencies to build that equation and nurture the relationship to become valued partners more than just service providers.
“There’s no magic formula for this and it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes years of consistently demonstrating a sense of brand ownership, of understanding business realities and employing creativity that helps solve real challenges. Slowly, idea by idea, success by success, you show clients irrefutable results and prove your value to earn their trust. Then, if you’re truly fortunate, you get to look back one day and realise that you’ve helped create a legacy.”
ON CLIENT CONSTRAINTS
The research also revealed that employees feel creatively constrained by the C-suite, particularly CEOs, who restrict innovation due to budget limitations or apprehension towards new approaches. Is this something you have witnessed? What would you say to clients struggling to get investment into those bigger, bolder creative ideas?
Pandey, Corcoise Films, India
“To be honest, in such situations I behave like a split personality. In the first half of our journey together, I genuinely try to understand the client’s reasoning, fears, and limitations. I also remind myself that the client comes from a very different background, so I need to hand-hold and walk them through my line of thinking.
“As for the second half of the journey - there is no second half. If the client continues to be fearful or indecisive, I suddenly pull my mind’s shutter down and save my energy for a client who knows what it takes to win. A campaign can only be as good as the client deserves.”
Lanzi, Digitas, North America
“More than ever, brands need to connect across a consumer’s network, since human behavior is anything but linear in today's world. That requires discussions on new places for brands to build fans and loyal customers: gaming platforms, AI-infused experiences, or Web3 loyalty programmes. Brands need to be invited into a consumer’s world wherever they are engaging, but we all know that budgets are finite.
“As brands increasingly invest in their owned properties and connect with their customers in a networked world, we’re having C-suite discussions to maximize finite investments. Because we’re designed to support creative experiences across a universe of creative possibilities—from big brand storytelling to AI-powered activations and culture-shaping creativity in social—there are more ways than ever to prioritise a client’s budget and brief. That’s why we’re strategic about where we’re investing based on a client’s brand and business goals."
Herceg, WPP, Australia and New Zealand
“There is no constraint on imagination. Some of the world’s best ideas started with modest budgets. You can start small. Prove that it works. Once the idea gains momentum, fresh money is (often) discovered and then invested. In my experience, the constraint isn’t simply financial. It’s often psychological. It takes courage. No equivocating. No decision-by-committee.
“Often it starts with one leader who has the gumption to take a position, then convince colleagues - one by one if that is what it takes - that the idea will pay dividends and grow the bottom line. Like a boulder rolling down a hill, the trick is to give the idea momentum to gather a larger budget.”
Forero, DDB, Colombia
“Companies reflect their top executives. That’s why it’s very important (and I advise young talents when they move to other companies) to pay close attention to who is running those companies. Is the C-suite looking for innovative, disruptive ideas and wanting to take the company to another level? Or is it traditional and very conservative? This will undoubtedly enhance or limit ideas within the organisation.
“If you want to have bold and innovative ideas, you need to work in places where your leaders think similarly. If this is not the case and you are already in a company where the C-suite is very traditional, I suggest you earn their trust through small achievements. In this way, confidence will build, step by step, as will the power of your ideas.
“Many times, we want a traditional client to become disruptive from one day to another. That is a very common mistake. Is it possible? Of course, but it’s going to take time, and you will need results to support it.”
Pantankar, Leo Burnett, UAE
“I don’t know if I’m just fortunate, but I have always had the privilege of working alongside CEOs who have never sought to choose between creativity and business results. Touch wood. Perhaps one of the core reasons I have had so many opportunities to create successful work is because I have led agencies as a mutually-aligned CEO-CCO partnership.
“You cannot create truly successful work – or offer real value to your clients - without realising that creativity drives business and business drives creativity. In our industry, one cannot succeed without the other.
“The same thing applies to client-side challenges. The struggle to secure marketing budgets is real, and as agencies, it is our responsibility to understand that. Bigger and bolder ideas are not always entirely budget-reliant. Today, technology is more democratised than ever before. There are always ways and means to get ideas out into the world, to prove their merit to clients and to convince them to secure more funding for scaling them up.. As I said before, once a client sees value in investing money in an idea, there’s no reason why they wouldn’t do it.”
ON INVESTMENT PRIORITIES
Social commerce, AI, and targeting interest-based communities were named in the research among the areas of highest investment for 2024. Could you select one and discuss the trends you're witnessing in that space? How will you be investing in it?
Pandey, Corcoise Films, India
“Over the years, as an industry, we have begun to concentrate all our energies only on two questions: WHERE to find the audience that we need to talk to and HOW we can reach it? In the process, we end up assuming that whatever will help us in those two efforts will also help us in the third and the most important question: WHAT do I need to do in order to endear myself to my audience?
“AI is a phenomenal tool to help us find answers to the first two questions, but not so much of a help when it comes to path-breaking ideas. The problem is that AI can learn only from that which has ever been published before in any form. Unfortunately, it cannot learn from personal observations or life experiences.
“On the other hand, path-breaking ideas are path-breaking only because no one else ever thought of them before. So, in a sense, AI and ideas are standing at two opposite ends.
“Don’t get me wrong. AI is definitely an incredible game-changer, but only as much as the PC was when it came in the 80s. The difference is that no one chose to call a PC an SB: a Super Brain. That would have surely got us all equally excited and scared.
“What AI does is collate an unimaginable amount of information at lightning speed and also remembers all that it did. In a sense, Artificial Intelligence should correctly have been called MD: Mind-blowing Diligence. Creative intelligence requires something completely different: it needs to be wonderfully devious and demented.
“Soon, everyone will be using AI to access all the same information, so where is your differential? I would invest in PEOPLE who are wonderfully devious and demented. Otherwise, we will be left simply holding the tools, and with nothing new and surprising to offer any client.”
Lanzi, Digitas, North America
“Technology, creativity, and commerce sit at the center of today’s marketing universe. Staying ahead of the curve requires intelligent products, people, and partnerships.
“On the talent front, we’ve been investing in innovation (AI, Web3 and gaming), as well as social and commerce expertise. Backing these investments are two product suites, fused with smart partner products, that we launched in late 2023 and 2024: Share Worthy and Trending, an agile, always-online team of cultural specialists who help clients discover and respond to real-time insights to engage with fans and communities.
“We also launched Digitas AI in 2024, an AI-powered operating system and tool suite designed to bring marketing experiences to life from standing-up agents, personas, and taskmasters that can decode scores of identity-based data. These products and services are all wrapped with a layer of skilled creatives, technologists, and data analysts to connect intelligence to insights to drive creative output.”
Herceg, WPP, Australia and New Zealand
“Social commerce is a fantastic development in a customer’s buying experience. Precision targeting at the exact moment of desire to allow for an immediate purchase. The removal of physical and geographic barriers opens opportunities to businesses that were unimaginable a couple of years ago.
“The trend I am most excited about is that companies are recruiting new customers they could never have predicted. A global marketplace with customers that may never have fit their ‘ideal segment’ but now shop with them and are shaping product innovation in new and interesting ways.”
Forero, DDB, Colombia
“Without a doubt, social commerce is a trend that is here to stay and has enormous potential to be exploited. One of the things agencies must understand is that today’s campaigns must go beyond communication and generate measurable impulses to purchase within the campaigns themselves.
“On the other hand, artificial intelligence can undoubtedly take us to unexplored places we cannot even imagine yet. In that sense, I think we are in an exploration stage. As I have been presiding over the Print & Publishing jury, I have been able to verify and see, in various excellent ideas, the enormous potential it can have. However, it is crucial to remember that artificial intelligence is nothing without human intelligence, talent, and great ideas. They are what truly matter.”
Pantankar, Leo Burnett, UAE
“Social commerce is definitely on the rise; it’s a domino effect of the rise of e-commerce triggered by the pandemic years. AI, especially generative AI, is all around us. From ChatGPT and Midjourney to Adobe and more, everyone’s getting onto it. Publicis Groupe has developed its proprietary AI as well, accessible through Marcel.
“Personally, what I find most fascinating is the potential of targeting interest-based communities. There is so much potential within that space to create relevant, meaningful work that resonates with the right audience.
“Social media today is very segregated into interest-based creation and consumption patterns – be it on TikTok or Reddit, or even LinkedIn. A captive audience, with everyone interested in the same thing, is such a ripe opportunity for a brand to hit home with the right combination of relevance, creativity, and entertainment. And again, at Publicis Groupe, our Power of One approach enables us to do that for our clients with seamless integration of our data practices, media houses and creative agencies.”
