The ear of insight, the eye of impact
Creative Strategy
at
Cannes Lions
honors the profound insights, meticulous planning, and strategic direction that serve as the fundamental blueprint for truly impactful creative work, addressing complex business challenges or seizing unique market opportunities.
Complementing this,
Creative Effectiveness
celebrates the demonstrable and measurable impact of these creative solutions on tangible business results. It's about rigorously proving how innovative thinking and strategic intent translate directly into growth, market share, enhanced brand equity, or transformative behavioral change.
Together, these categories underscore that true creative triumph stems from a robust "why" driving the "what," validated by compelling, real-world outcomes that propel businesses forward.
This segment focuses on Creative Strategy and Creative Effectiveness, exploring campaigns where exceptional strategic foresight and execution led to demonstrable and significant business impact, showcasing the full arc from insightful planning to measurable success for businesses and brands.
Creative Effectiveness
The Misheard Version - Specsavers, Golin London
"The Misheard Version" campaign for Specsavers, developed in collaboration with Golin London, was an innovative and highly engaging initiative designed to subtly underscore the critical importance of regular hearing tests. The campaign leveraged a pervasive and often humorous online cultural phenomenon: the tendency for people to debate or misinterpret song lyrics.
Specsavers strategically partnered with iconic musician Rick Astley to re-record his globally recognised hit song, "Never Gonna Give You Up."
Crucially, this new version featured deliberately altered, or "misheard," lyrics. By presenting a beloved and familiar song with incorrect or comically distorted words, the campaign immediately piqued listeners' curiosity. It compelled them to actively question what they were hearing and, by extension, reflect on the accuracy of their own auditory perception.
This indirect, yet highly effective, approach prompted individuals to consider their own hearing health and subtly encouraged them to seek out hearing tests, transforming a common online quirk into a powerful public health message.
Don't Drink Hertog Jan - Hertog Jan, Gut Amsterdam
Hertog Jan, a distinctive craft beer brand based in Amsterdam, launched the "Don't Drink Hertog Jan" campaign in collaboration with Gut Amsterdam, ingeniously challenging conventional norms within the beer category. Operating without the substantial media budgets of major beer conglomerates and facing intense competition, Hertog Jan pivoted its strategy to intensely emphasize its core strengths: superior craft and exceptional quality.
Rather than promoting immediate consumption, the brand's provocative message encouraged consumers to age their beer, asserting that its complex flavors and characteristics would only deepen and improve over time, much like a fine wine. To support and facilitate this unique proposition, Hertog Jan went beyond mere messaging: they established a dedicated physical cellar where loyal customers could store their purchased beer under optimal conditions.
Additionally, the brand provided comprehensive guidance and tips for consumers interested in home aging their beer, democratising the process. This innovative approach carved out a distinct brand proposition in a crowded market, fostering a unique "beer aging" culture and community around its product, transforming how consumers engaged with and perceived craft beer.
Creative Strategy
The AI President - An-Nahar Newspaper, Impact BBDO Dubai
An-Nahar Newspaper in Lebanon, in collaboration with Impact BBDO Dubai, launched the "The AI President" initiative to critically address the nation's severe political instability, particularly the prolonged and detrimental vacuum created by the absence of a sitting president. The campaign was founded on the insight that traditional political efforts to appoint a head of state were often perceived by the public as being driven by hidden agendas and self-interest, rather than genuine public welfare.
To counter this, An-Nahar developed an "The AI President" – an artificial intelligence model meticulously trained on years of the newspaper's vast archives of reporting, journalistic insights, and public discourse. This sophisticated AI was engineered to function as a digital voice of the people. Its role was to propose objective policies, suggest new laws, and offer recommendations directly to the government, all designed to serve the collective public interest.
By creating a transparent, algorithm-driven "president," An-Nahar powerfully urged Lebanon's politicians to abandon their stalemates and seriously address the urgent need for a legitimate and publicly-oriented head of state for the nation. The initiative served as both a commentary on the political deadlock and a tangible demonstration of what objective leadership could look like.
Humanimal Tourism - ProColombia, DDB Colombia Bogotá
ProColombia, the government agency responsible for promoting tourism, in collaboration with DDB Colombia Bogotá, developed the innovative "Humanimal Tourism" campaign. This initiative aimed to powerfully highlight Colombia's extraordinary biodiversity and attract a new segment of visitors to the country.
The campaign was built upon a compelling and unique insight: while Colombia ranked approximately 50th globally in human tourist visits, it held the remarkable distinction of being the fourth most visited country worldwide by migratory animal species. Leveraging this compelling data, Colombia Tourism undertook extensive efforts to track the migratory patterns of various wildlife species across the country's diverse ecosystems.
Based on this intricate understanding, they then meticulously designed tourism promotions and recommended specific travel times for human tourists, aligning them with the periods when particular migratory species would be present and most visible. This strategic alignment allowed human visitors a unique opportunity to observe these natural phenomena in their prime.
Crucially, the campaign also incorporated a strong sustainable tourism component: promotions for specific viewing areas were actively halted once natural capacity limits were reached. This proactive measure prevented overcrowding, minimised ecological impact and underscored a commitment to protecting both the wildlife and their habitats.
(At BE Extraordinary, a series about the winners at Cannes Lions in collaboration with Harsh Kapadia, CCO, Grey India, we peer outside the Grand Prix, and look at clutter breaking work that picked the silvers and the bronzes, but don't often get discussed.)
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