Cannes Lions Festival Expands Awards Categories and Programming
17.06.2024 - 17:33
/ variety.com
Robert Marich As digital media mushrooms, advertising messages get disseminated across a growing variety of platforms — in increasingly inventive ways. Rather than the products being sold, it’s these marketing communications that take the spotlight at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
The 71st edition of the Lions awards runs June 17-21 in Cannes, France, to celebrate ingenuity in advertising, branding, marketing campaigns and marketing messaging. “The ready availability of so many new tools makes the landscape wildly competitive, and most entry barriers have been eliminated,” says Madeline Nelson, head of U.S.
independent label relations at Amazon Music, who serves at jury president for this year’s Entertainment Lions for Music competition. “Immediate insights like ‘views,’ ‘likes’ and audience demographics means that creators are able to pivot, adapt and update content based on real-time reactions and feedback.” The Lions were founded in 1954, inspired by the Cannes Film Festival.
But in contrast to its counterpart event’s tunnel-vision focus on artistry, the Lions are poised at the intersection of art and commerce, making their awards particularly prized because winners are celebrated for crafting marketing that delivers sales — as well as being cool. Though Hollywood’s impressive cottage industry of creative boutiques that craft film and TV marketing campaigns don’t typically cast a big shadow at the Lions, advertising in every industry competes for these awards.
In 2012, for example, the festival launched a Branded Content & Entertainment Lions section to recognize brands creating or integrating original content into campaigns, and has grown over the years. By 2019, the dedicated Entertainment
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