Written by The Location Guide on Jun 14, 2023. Posted in Awards and Festivals

Cannes Lions 2023: New Creative Benchmarks

As befits a champion of creative excellence and progress, the Cannes Lions Awards have evolved to include gaming, the metaverse, a greater focus on effectiveness and with sustainability and diversity running throughout its core.

In recognition of the pervasive impact that gameplay is having on marketing, a new Lions Award is introduced this year, as part of wider refresh of the event. The Entertainment Lions for Gaming celebrates exceptional work that sits at the intersection of gaming and marketing.

“This new Lion is being introduced at a time when the gaming industry is truly reaching new heights,” Francine Li, Jury President and Global Head of Marketing, Riot Games. “I believe that gaming is the future of entertainment, bringing together passionate global communities in shared immersive and interactive experiences."

A Gold winning example in Entertainment from 2022 was the climate change simulator that Greenpeace built into one of the most popular video games in the world: GTA Online. Created by VMLY&R Sao Paulo, the GTA Los Santos map was transformed into an alarming prediction of what the world could look like if the planet continued to heat up by another 3ºC.

Players voluntarily livestreamed over 450 hours of content in the first week alone. And without any Greenpeace investment, the project generated an extra 340% in petition signatures, 40% in donations, and almost 30 million in earned media – not to mention 15 Cannes Lions Awards.

Brand marketers, media owners and agencies will come back from the festival armed with new ways to respond to the current climate and to maximise their impact through creative effectiveness for both the short and the long term.

The definition of Mobile Lions has been updated for 2023 to include all applications of portable devices and mobile technology. In addition, categories across the Lions have been amended to celebrate work that focuses on how the mobile device was central to the user experience.

Cannes Lions 2023 will see the introduction of the Metaverse into categories focused on new realities and emerging tech. For the purposes of the awards, the use of the Metaverse is defined as ‘the creative application of immersive experiences which creatively push the boundaries of technology’.

Other category descriptions across the Lions have been expanded to include virtual worlds, new realities and the associated technology and innovations.

Also new is Creative Impact, co-curated with WARC, that will run every day and across multiple stages as part of the festival. This builds on the focus on effectiveness at Cannes 2022 and reflects the extreme pressure on marketing budgets in the current economic climate.

Paul Coxhill, CEO, WARC, commented: "In 2022 WARC organised a hugely successful effectiveness series at Cannes Lions, building on 10 years of ever-growing programming. We’re delighted to work with Lions to expand this into the Creative Impact stream, bringing the best thinking on effectiveness from around the world into one place. Brand marketers, media owners and agencies will come back from the festival armed with new ways to respond to the current climate and to maximise their impact through creative effectiveness for both the short and the long term.”

We believe it’s our collective responsibility to drive action on sustainability through creativity.

As part of the festival’s ongoing commitment to driving action on climate change, the Lions is encouraging sustainability reporting for all entries. Entrants are urged to outline their C02 emissions on the piece of work being submitted. The data is being collated by the festival to benchmark best-practice across the production and distribution of creative work globally, “and will not inform the judging process”. As last year, all 2023 Sustainable Development Goals Lions entry fees will be donated to charity.

Simon Cook, CEO of Cannes Lions, said, “We believe it’s our collective responsibility to drive action on sustainability through creativity. That’s why we’re embedding sustainability across all of the Lions awards this year to inform best-practice and support the ambitions of Ad Net Zero.”

Another non-mandatory piece of information that entrants are encouraged to provide concerns the composition of the teams involved ‘behind the camera’ and any relevant information about the brand or agency’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion agenda. It is intended to measure progress and the findings will be presented (anonymously) back to the industry in the form of an annual report.

The Creative B2B Lions return for a second year – with some important changes to better showcase what pure B2B creativity looks like. The distinction between products and services has been removed and instead combined into one category. There’s more emphasis on the strategy and results sections in judging criteria. In addition, there’s a new Integrated Campaign category to recognise the multi-touchpoint, multi-stakeholder nature of the buying journey for B2B creative work.

In a first, Impact BBDO’s Ali Rez is the Lions’ first Jury President from the Middle East. Commenting on the appointment, Rez said, “The UAE is a place where creativity thrives, and where we believe nothing is impossible. It is a special honour to represent that very spirit of this inspiring country, and the rich heritage of the Middle East, at Cannes Lions as Jury President. I hope this announcement will pave the way for many more people from the region to lead juries in the future at this most prestigious of awards.”

Also serving as Jury Presidents are Christian Juhl, Global CEO, GroupM (Media Lions); Shannon Washington, US CCO, Connected Communications, R/GA (Mobile Lions); Brent Anderson, Global CCO, TBWA\Media Arts Lab (Entertainment Lions); Danielle Hinde, Owner / Executive Producer, Doomsday Entertainment (Entertainment Lions for Music); Bruno Bertelli, Global CEO of Le Pub, Global CCO of Publicis Worldwide (Film Lions).

This article appears in the latest issue of makers, our bi-annual magazine for the international production community. Order it online today.