Grand Prix, Part 4: Modern Marketing At Cannes Lions 2024
All work, no rants. Sorry.
The weekend’s near, and that’s always a good time to catch up on some reading. If you’ve bookmarked Part 1, 2 and 3 of this series, now’s a good time to block off time to read!
The past few days have been packed with interesting conversation and interesting reading about Modern Marketing. A few thoughts:
Modern Marketing still feels like an ambiguous area. The majority of people I spoke with accepted the parameters I defined for this series without a second thought. For the most part, they just seemed relieved that somebody they see as an expert is thinking about it, so they don’t have to.
Measurement is still an area of worry. It’s hard for most marketers to convince their CFOs that what they’re able to measure does add up to incremental impact. The jury is still out here, and there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to connect work that’s largely social-first to business impact. I find Avinash Kaushik’s newsletter good food for thought if you’d like to chart your own path. Ideas on what metrics we could adopt, most welcome.
I’m about a quarter of the way through Gary Vaynerchuk’s latest book, Day Trading Attention. GaryVee has inspired much of my thinking in the last couple of months - particularly around cohort-driven marketing and flipping the script on how to build TV commercials out of social data.
And now, on to the work.
Creative B2B: JCDecaux - Meet Marina Prieto
Customer-centric? 🤔. I’m not entirely convinced. It’s not clear to me why spends declined. However, the results at the end suggested that building high-level awareness for subway advertising worked. Was it the right insight? Or did the sheer ubiquity of the medium work? Or
Culturally relevant? ✅. People are always looking for interesting social accounts to follow. By creating intrigue around Marina Prieto, the team created a cultural artifact that powered their campaign.
Gets noticed? ✅. You can’t just credit the sheer ubiquity of the medium did the trick here. The creative itself was designed to draw eyeballs and drive attention and sharing. Which makes me wonder - was the decline in subway media buys down to poor creative that didn’t drive the results clients had hoped for?
Measurable results? ✅.
Is this Modern Marketing? ✅. It’s good to see B2B brands finding engaging ways to sell. On an aside though, this should never have won at Cannes. It’s a straight rip-off from Neil French’s iconic XO Beer campaign, which had the same brief, just for print. Poor form by the jury, IMHO.
Creative Data: MasterCard - Room For Everyone
Customer-centric? ❌. I can’t imagine the hardship and heartbreak that Ukrainian refugees are facing. But despite how clever the use of data in this work is, it isn’t born from a strong insight or need - it’s opportunistic and superficial.
Culturally relevant? ❌. Again, MasterCard seem to have jumped on to a global issue without having any real justification. I don’t see them providing low-cost business loans or upskilling programmes to refugees, for example, that justifies their participation in this conversation. This is wokewashing all over again.
Gets noticed? ❌. Nope.
Measurable results? ❌. Nope, nope, nope.
Is this Modern Marketing? ❌. I still have a few “nopes” left in my keyboard. Far from Modern Marketing, this feels scammy and opportunistic. And a great example of when not to stand up for an issue.
Direct: Xbox - The Everyday Tactician
I covered this campaign in Part 3 of my series. So far, it’s the only campaign I’ve reviewed that I wish I’d done.
Media: Mercado Libre - Handshake Hunt
Customer-centric? ✅. You don’t always need to struggle to find a need - often, the simplest one is good enough to build on.
Culturally relevant? ✅. The team took the world’s biggest shopping moment, one that’s now grown to become a global cultural phenomenon and not just a commercial one.
Gets noticed? ✅. While large moments are tricky given the competition to achieve a high SOV, Handshake Hunt delivered that in spades.
Measurable results? ✅. Great earned media. Sales up. Stock price up. I bet the team were laughing all the way to the bank.
Is this Modern Marketing? ✅. And a beautiful example of it.
PR: Specsavers - The Misheard Version
I covered this in Part 1, and, to put it succinctly, am a huge fan.
If you’ve enjoyed this series, please do share with anyone who you think might benefit from this analysis. Or anyone that might have an opinion 😉
Have a good weekend, and see you for Part 5 and 6 (the last two) next week.
Samit