IPA’s Laurence Green: my (Creative Effectiveness) Top Tips for Cannes
“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.”
So warned Niels Bohr, the Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist and so-called father of atomic thinking. It’s a quote that’s also attributed to the great baseball coach Yogi Berra.
Bohr or Berra? Whoever. Whatever. Either way: I agree, so I’m going to dodge the bear trap by predicting the winners of the Creative Effectiveness Lions, introduced not so long ago to “celebrate the measurable impact of creative work”. And, it turns out, a portent of where the Festival of Creativity was – and is – heading. Cannes is becoming a kind of sports day for effectiveness dudes. (They mainly are dudes.)
To win a Creative Effectiveness Lion, your campaign has to have been shortlisted for a creative prize in previous years. (Last year’s winners included Heinz, Dove and McDonalds for ‘Raise Your Arches’.) So my shortlist is already drawn up for me, and my choices constitute the winning creative work from last year that I hope pulls through this. The new global standard-bearers for ‘work that works’.
It’s the ‘advertising’ (not always made by ‘ad agencies’) that I want to have worked…and that I suspect probably did. Not least because each idea below was successfully scaled, thanks either to old-fashioned paid-for media or the much rarer, much riskier bet on ‘earned’.
Top Tips for Cannes
In no particular order..
Specsavers Misheard Version. Golin London.
These guys have form in the effectiveness game as well as the creative event. I’d be amazed if they haven’t, or can’t, make the commercial case for ‘Dessert Spoons’.
Lynx/Axe – Robbery. Lola Madrid
Probably my favourite ad from 2024: a Houdini-like escape from the modern perils of the brand’s long-standing (and multiple award-winning) ‘attraction’ positioning. Long term brand platform winner, against the odds?
From the same stable: Magnum – Find Your Summer
Lovely work with an effectiveness cheat code. De-seasonalising sales is one of the easier things to prove (or disprove).
Michael CeraVe. Ogilvy PR NYC. Just because.
And finally: JC Decaux. Meet Marina Prieto. David Madrid. If an advertising agency can’t make the case for the commercial return on an advertising campaign for an advertising client running in its own media (and beyond), we’re all doomed.
In short: Madrid misses out on the Champions League 2025. Makes up for it at the Cannes Festival of Creativity. The IPA relocates to Puerta del Sol.
Laurence Green is director of effectiveness at UK agency trade body IPA. And Cannes Grand Prix winner for Cadbury’s Gorilla and Tate Britain. But not Sony Balls (all Fallon.). Which he still finds annoying.
