Grand Prix: Modern Marketing at Cannes Lions 2025, Part 3
The final rant. For now.
The Cannes Lions buzz has started fading on LinkedIn. Which makes the timing of this post all the better — one final rant hurrah analysis critique.
And here are Part 1 and Part 2, in case you' missed them.
On to Part 3!
🧑🎄 Natura: The Amazon Greenventory
🥷 Africa Creative DDB, Sao Paulo
🏆 Sustainable Development Goals
Customer-centric? 🤔 It’s definitely cause-centric. The positive: the connect to long-term income for local families. The negative: the question on whether this was a real problem.
Rooted in culture? ✅ Climate change is a big topic.
Gets noticed? ✅ I’ll argue that the pickup was amongst policymaker circles.
Measurable results? ❌ I’m not so sure. The business impact is unclear; and the impact to preservation, even more so.
Is this Modern Marketing? ❌
🧑🎄 Viatris: Make Love LAst — Bedroom
🥷 Ogilvy, Shanghai
🏆 Pharma
Customer-centric? ✅ ED is a real issue, and the film captures the product benefit in a compelling way.
Rooted in culture? ❌ Nothing here that would classify as a cultural connection.
Gets noticed? ❌ No evidence here either.
Measurable results? ❌
Is this Modern Marketing? ❌ It’s a nice ad, but that’s where it stops.
🧑🎄 IDOMED: Nigrum Corpus
🥷 ARTPLAN, Sao Paulo
🏆 Industry Craft
Customer-centric? ✅ Racism is a no-brainer issue. And racism in a medical context is a common, yet, oft-ignored problem.
Rooted in culture? 🤔 Racism is a cultural issue. The case study, however, doesn’t draw that connect to local culture.
Gets noticed? ❌ No evidence.
Measurable results? ❌ Not even mentioned.
Is this Modern Marketing? ❌ This is beautiful work. It also feels like it’s #MadeForCannesLions.
🧑🎄 Museum For The United Nations — UN Live, Spotify: Sounds Right
🥷 AKQA, Copenhagen
🏆 Innovation
Customer-centric? ❌ I…don’t see it.
Rooted in culture? ✅ I like the connect to global music artistes.
Gets noticed? 🤔 What’s unclear is, how many of those claimed impressions and streams were driven by the music and not nature?
Measurable results? ❌ Hell no. The level of overclaim — “Fans of music become fans of nature” — is staggering.
Is this Modern Marketing? ❌ This is an interesting idea, but I’m just left shaking my head.
🧑🎄 LVMH: The Partnership That Changed Everything
🥷 Havas Play, Paris
🏆 Luxury
Customer-centric? ❌ This feels like a B2B challenge, not a real customer problem.
Rooted in culture? ✅ I do like how they hacked the Olympic guidelines, by weaving their product into the performance. Is this new, no? Is this smart, yes.
Gets noticed? 🤔 I’ll bet not. This is an advertising innovation, and worth an award in a different category
Measurable results? ❌ Unclear.
Is this Modern Marketing? ❌ Contrary to the claim, this was advertising, this was sports sponsorship, and this did not change the Games forever.
🧑🎄 Indian Railways: Lucky Yatra
🥷 FCB India, Mumbai
🏆 PR
Customer-centric? ✅ Yes. Anyone who’s travelled in Mumbai’s locals knows that ticketless travel is a real scourge.
Rooted in culture? ✅ The connect to lottery tickets is genius.
Gets noticed? ❌ I’ll look beyond the case study to the news around it. The client admitted they didn’t see enough impact — as a result of not promoting it enough. The initiative is currently paused.
Measurable results? ❌ See above.
Is this Modern Marketing? ❌ With the deepest respect to my friends at FCB, this doesn’t pass muster.
🧑🎄 Penny: Price Packs
🥷 Serviceplan, Munich
🏆 Print & Publishing
Customer-centric? ✅ Inflation is a massive issue today.
Rooted in culture? ✅ See above.
Gets noticed? ✅ I love the packaging change. Ridiculously genius level idea.
Measurable results? ✅ Availability across 2K+ stores. Selling out. Media coverage.
Is this Modern Marketing? ✅ Take a bow, Penny and Serviceplan. I wish I’d done this work.
🧑🎄 Budweiser: One Second Ads
🥷 Africa Creative DDB, Sao Paulo
🏆 Radio & Audio
Customer-centric? ✅ The job of brands like Budweiser is simple — recall. This one did that job, and well.
Rooted in culture? ✅ Bud and Music go hand in hand.
Gets noticed? ✅ Sharp influencer seeding and a novel format got the audience’s attention.
Measurable results? ❌ “Zero ads skipped” doesn’t quite sound like a claim that’ll resonate with the CFO.
Is this Modern Marketing? ❌
🧑🎄 Apple: Shot On iPhone
🥷 TBWA\Media Arts Lab, Los Angeles
🏆 Creative Effectiveness
Customer-centric? ✅
Rooted in culture? ✅
Gets noticed? ✅
Measurable results? ✅
Is this Modern Marketing? ✅ I’m really not sure I need to say much about a campaign that created culture…and copycats.