What the best Cannes Lions campaigns have in common

Cannes Lions represents one of the most prestigious recognitions in advertising. Often dubbed the Oscars of advertising, the festival puts a spotlight on some of the most creative, innovative and exceptional global advertising campaigns of the year. 

As a global festival, drawing over 30,000 entries every year, individual campaigns are diverse but many winning entries share strategic and creative commonalities. 

Understanding these common threads can show you how to design campaigns that stand out creatively and move audiences. 

Below, I share my Cannes Lions campaign analysis, exploring the common threads in the festival’s award winners. 

The strongest Lions campaigns are often built around cultural conversations. They respond to cultural and social issues of the moment, building on social momentum. Often sharing unique takes and unafraid to be disruptive, these campaigns challenge the status quo. 

Responding to societal moments

Distinctive campaigns often align themselves with current cultural or social themes. As one of the most memorable OTTH campaigns of all time, on the eve of International Women’s Day 2017, State Street Global Advisors set up a bronze statue of a young girl squaring up to Wall Street's Charging Bull. 

Built to illuminate women's lack of representation in positions of leadership, the campaign won four Grand Prix (including Titanium and Glass) at that year's festival. 

“When the Fearless Girl statue showed up on Wall Street in 2017, she took New York by storm. Though she was small, she was mighty. Standing at less than 5 feet, the statue held her ground against the powerful Charging Bull statue — with the massive animal looming over her — and made a statement for women in the workplace everywhere." - Hedy Phillips, The Wall Street Experience

From beer to razor blade commercials, in the early 2010s, many ads embodied a bland kind of hyper masculinity. And millennial consumers were becoming more and more cynical of “hyper masculine” ad tropes. 

In response to millennial sentiment and the brand’s research finding that women often use and buy men's toiletries for them, Old Spice and Wieden+Kennedy targeted female consumers with a parody of the popular ads of the period in The Man Your Man Could Smell Like (2010). 

D&AD says: “Another key insight the team uncovered was that women were responsible for more than 50 percent of body wash purchases. 'The Man Your Man Could Smell Like' ad was the best articulation of this strategy when it aired in 2010, kicking off the new campaign conceived to speak to both men and women simultaneously—a first.”

"The first commercial, ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like,’ was an overnight success and quickly became a cultural phenomenon, generating significant word-of-mouth buzz online and off-line, and getting referenced by many celebrity fans." 

Beyond aligning with millennials’ cynicism at tired tropes of masculinity, the soon-to-be viral commercial mimicked the satirical meme-heavy conversations many consumers were having online, leaning into ironic humor — making it a viral hit and landing it the 2010 Film Grand Prix and the 2011 Creative Effectiveness Gold Lion.

Authentic brand participation

Many winning campaigns share an original perspective on conversation, whether in their market or on wider social issues. They enter conversations in ways that feel credible and genuine, often encouraging deeper conversations. 

Vaseline's 2025 Verified campaign called out unproven DIY skincare hacks on TikTok. Created by Ogilvy Singapore, the campaign won the Grand Prix in the Health & Wellness category at Cannes Lions 2025.

The bestselling beauty brand recruited Unilever scientists to lab-test viral trends — bringing science to suggestion. The campaign asked consumers to bring a more thoughtful critical eye to viral beauty and health hacks, using science to break through misinformation and support consumers to feel more confident in their health and beauty choices. 

To push back against the manosphere and rising misogynist content online, L’Oreal decided to retell the story of one of the most memorable advertising slogans of all time. The Final Copy of Ilon Specht takes L'Oréal's famous slogan, "Because you're worth it," and tells the iconic line’s feminist backstory. 

Celebrating the copywriter behind the slogan, Chelsea Jean-Lassiter, an Associate Creative Director at McCann Paris, the ad explored the lesser-known defiance and rage behind the iconic line.  

The film at the centre of the campaign was directed by two-time Academy Award and Emmy winner Ben Proudfoot. The film was created by McCann, Proudfoot's Breakwater Studios and production company Traverse 32. The 17-minute documentary honors Ilon Specht, celebrated McCann copywriter who helped build L'Oréal Paris into a global beauty empire.

"Ilon Specht was more than just a copywriter, she was a visionary. She defied the norms of her time with one bold statement that turned into a global movement. I'm grateful to our partners at McCann who have helped bring her final words to the world in a way that honors her legacy." said Delphine Viguier-Hovasse, Global Brand President of L'Oréal Paris. The campaign won the Film Grand Prix in 2025. 

Local insight with global resonance

To curb the issue of ticket evasion in Mumbai, FCB India gamified ticket purchases by turning train tickets into lottery tickets. A clever detour from the policing tones of many ticket evasion campaigns, FCB leaned into the cultural belief in Kismet (fate) — making buying a ticket more rewarding than saving on fares. 

A great application of behavioral psychology, rewarding people who follow the rules over punishing those who don’t — the campaign won the PR Grand Prix. 

“By shifting the conversation from penalty to possibility, Lucky Yatra is reshaping how passengers view train tickets. No longer just a fare, it's a chance to win big."

- Rakesh Menon, CCO at FCB Interface

Many award-winning local campaigns that receive global acclaim act as a medium for social good. 

Millions of women in Mexico can't access bank accounts because they don't have a formal credit history. What they do have is decades of perfect "credit" with their tiendas — shop owners in their local city, town, or village. These local shopkeepers sell to them based on their reputation and the years of trust they've built up buying from their shops. 

Recognizing women's exclusion from financial security and the power of local "currency," Datatienda collected local “credit” data and WeCapital created a platform that turned the tiendas' handwritten ledger books into official credit scores — giving women access to microcredits to support their businesses. Shortly after the campaign’s release, over 10,300 women had signed up for the platform. The campaign, created by DDB Mexico, was recognized with the Creative Data Grand Prix and Glass Lion.

Winning campaigns often start with a sharp, unexpected insight uncovered from consumer research. Read on to see how winning Lions’ campaigns took creative advertising insights and hidden consumer truths and created stand-out campaigns. 

Identifying overlooked behaviors

Some of the best campaigns make smart, interesting observations about hidden or overlooked consumer behaviors. As I wrote in my past post on the psychology of buying behavior, the majority of our decisions are based on heuristics and instinct. We decide quickly, instinctively — from the unconscious mind. 

HungerStation recognized the role the unconscious plays in determining our choices. They helped make the unconscious conscious and broke through the paralysis of choice by answering the question: “Could your unconscious mind tell you where you really want to order from and save you hours of deliberation?” 

They launched Find My Craving in 2023, a campaign that uses AI-backed eyetracking to help consumers beat choice overload and find the restaurant their subconscious mind is craving. 

HungerStation says:

"The campaign works by loading images of delicious HungerStation dishes onto your screen and analyzing eye-tracking data to see which meals “unlocked” your eyes and most attracted your attention. Using computer vision to hack decision fatigue on a mobile device was a fantastic technical and design challenge. The tool provides inspiration during the decision-making process, which I’m sure we could all use a little respite from sometimes, and compresses the purchase journey for HungerStation’s customers.”

In the first two weeks of the campaign, the brand had received 630K portal visits and attracted 78K new customers. The campaign won the Creative Commerce Grand Prix for its creativity in uncovering hidden consumer behavior while solving a real customer pain. 

Turning insight into a creative idea

Consumer research, from the gems hidden in consumer interviews to social listening, can be the foundation of some of the most interesting or memorable campaigns. 

Turning social listening into witty self-deprication, Skittles responded to consumers’ uproar across social medias on the brand’s replacement of lime with apple Skittles with their ad: Apologise the Rainbow. Lions judges noted that the self-deprecating ad signaled the, “slow re-emergence of fun,” in advertising. 

The brand set up a mock press conference on Twitch, in which a suited up “Skittles’ executive” read out some of the wittiest, most memorable takesdowns of green skittles on Twitter, sharing gems like, “Green skittles are the physical manifestation of sadness.” 

Reframing category assumptions

In the fast-moving, consumer packaged goods space, consumers often prioritize price over brand. But Heinz used their campaign to disrupt the market status quo and prove that brand is better when it comes to ketchup, even when there are cheaper alternatives.

As one of the best Lions award-winning advertising campaigns in the past few years, Heinz's 2021 Draw Ketchup campaign used implicit memory and brand salience to prove their iconic status and their unrivaled market dominance. 

For the campaign, they asked consumers in 18 different countries to draw ketchup. And almost everyone drew Heinz:

The campaign won several Gold and Silver Lions throughout 2021 and 2022 and was later awarded the 2024 Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix.

Creative work awarded with a Lion often captures both attention and emotion with distinctive storytelling. Let’s take a look at some of the best award winning advertising campaigns in this category.

Memorable narrative structures

Many of the most memorable campaigns are built around stories that delight, entertain or inspire. 

After a series of unsuccessful campaigns, Metro Trains in Melbourne couldn't get commuters to take their safety PSAs seriously. Using humor to surprise and delight, Erikson McCann released a catchy song and animation featuring characters dying in a variety of dumb ways. From grizzly bear to setting fire to your hair, consumers loved the ad’s quirky poke up mortality.  

Within five days the quirky ad had racked up over 5.2 million views online. At the time of release, the campaign's creative storytelling became the most awarded campaign in history, taking home five Grand Prix.

Emotional connection

Standout campaigns often connect with consumers emotionally in surprising and creative ways. One of the most memorable examples of this is Google’s first Super Bowl ad. 

How much of your life story could be told through your Google search history? Google played this out with their first ever Super Bowl ad in 2010: Parisian Love. 

The ad shows an American exchange student finding love in Paris. He Googles: studying abroad, how to impress a French woman, how to do a long distance relationship and how to assemble a crib. The romantic adventure connected with consumers by humanizing digital search and was awarded the Gold Lion. 

Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) and ITV's The Last Photo campaign brought empathy and deeper understanding to the way depression manifests with the aim of suppoting people struggling with suicidal thoughts. 

The wider campaign shared pictures of the last photo taken before people committed suicide, including a line up of pictures in which people struggling with depression and other mental health issues appeared happy or at ease with friends and family. 

“If we can all start one conversation about suicide, together we can save more lives. Over dinner. In schools. In offices. At the pub. In parliament. Right across the country. We need to break the silence and smash the stigma around suicide and get everyone talking about it.” - Campaign Against Living Miserably

The campaign won a number of Gold Lions and almost took home the Grand Prix.

Simplicity and clarity of message

When it comes to creative effectiveness, ads with clear messaging and concepts typically outperform ads that consumers find hard to follow. And the Lions back this by awarding several campaigns with a clear, simple message with a Lion throughout the years.  

Volvo's 2019 The E.V.A. Initiative won the Grand Prix for Creative Strategy with their simple, powerful ad built around 40 years of crash-test data. While many car ads are sleek, dramatic and high energy, Volvo used their award-winning ad to communicate a simple but important fact: driving is more dangerous for women than men. 

In the ad, Volvo shared that across the decades, most car manufacturers only used male crash-test dummies — putting women's lives at risk. While their cars are tested equally across the genders. Beyond the ad, they invited their competitors and consumers to access and download their entire research library. 

Many award-winning campaigns rethink how media is used, from comedy specials on sensitive topics to out-of-the-box interactive campaigns. Let’s take a look at some of the most creative uses of media from Lions campaigns. 

Platform-native creativity

As one of the most memorable ads built for digital and amplified on social, Budweiser won the Audio and Radio Lions Grand Prix in 2025 for their campaign One Second Ads. 

Based on research that most Gen Z consumers skip ads after one second, Budweiser and Africa Creative DDB, São Paulo created one-second high-energy clips of iconic songs — from AC/DC hits to Foo Fighter classics. Inviting users to replay ads to guess the songs, fans shared their guesses across social media. 

For their Flipvertising campaign by CHEP Network in 2023, Samsung hacked the Google algorithm by hiding deals for free phones in ads. All consumers had to do was Google the right keywords to get ads to target them. 

They hid a series of clues in YouTube ads and invited consumers to search for the right terms (hyper-specific quirky choices) that would make them a target for Samsung's flipphone ads. Breaking through the easy-to-switch off ads. The campaign smashed industry engagement by over 600% and won the 2023 Cannes Lions Social & Influencer Grand Prix.

Interactive and experiential campaigns

A great example of a digital-to-physical experiential campaign, Burger King debuted the Whopper Detour in 2019. The campaign invited consumers to buy a 1-cent Whopper only if they were standing in a McDonald's store. 

Upping the stakes in the fast food wars, the burger chain used geofencing to bring the offer to 14,000 McDonald's, encouraging consumers to order through the BK app on their smartphones and guiding them to the nearest Burger King to pick up their Whopper.

The campaign scored several awards at the 2019 Cannes Lions including the Titanium Grand Prix, the Mobile Grand Prix and the Direct Grand Prix. 

Unexpected placements

As one of the best unconventional uses of media in advertising, OgilvyOne designed real-time billboards for British Airways. 

Using live flight data, the billboard matched specific flight data with details on the flight, coupled with a young child pointing at the sky and a CTA hashtag inviting passersby to look up flight information. Bringing a sense of fun and novelty to a typically static medium, the creative campaign scored the Direct Grand Prix in 2014. 

While AXA sought to break through the taboo and stigma connected to mental health issues and highlight the healing inherent in sharing with their TV special: Group Therapy, a 90-minute-long mental health documentary. 

Launched on Prime Video, co-produced by AXA and Hartbeat, the group therapy session was headed up by Neil Patrick Harris and brought together popular comedians like Tig Notaro and Nicole Byer — who shared their dark, comedic and self-questioning thoughts with a live audience.

"Stand-up comedians are well known for spilling their hearts, intimate stories and struggles in front of an audience. Group Therapy is a unique initiative, starring a group of six world-class stand-up comedians whose voices this time encourage others to share more, with a simple life-saving message: sharing is therapeutic." - AXA

Giving an important social issue a deeper, more explorative medium than a short stand-alone ad, the campaign brought the lightheartedness of a live comedy show to exploratory conversations about mental health from anti-depressants and treatment resistant depression to suicidal thoughts.

Let’s take a look at how you can apply these principles in your own campaigns. 

Starting with insight rather than execution

Many of our Lions award-winners build their campaigns around solving a real consumer problem. 

From providing women without credit histories access to financial support through local social currency to helping consumers overcome decision fatigue and land on the right restaurant choice for them faster, many of the most effective campaigns use consumer insights to solve consumer problems.  

Many of the best campaign ideas can grow out of listening to consumers and finding out how you can solve their problems in creative and innovative ways. Interviews, social listening, product usage patterns and conversations with your sales and support team — listening in to consumer thoughts, perspectives and frustrations can provide you with a doorway into attention-grabbing ideas and solutions that have a real utility for your audience. 

Embracing creative risk

Most Cannes Lions winning campaigns are born from creative risk. Instead of replicating tired concepts, narratives and stylistic choices — our award-winners  pushed beyond category and advertising norms, differentiating themselves in a crowded media environment. 

"If a campaign doesn’t scare you a little bit, it’s likely too safe to be worth the investment. The best creative work should feel like being at the top of a rollercoaster: a mix of elation and angst."

- Jenny Sagstrom, Founder And Chief Executive Officer, Sköna

Innovation, creativity and play is the essence of great advertising. 

Using traditional media channels in new ways, pushing for unique experiential campaigns, challenging social and advertising norms and crafting innovative narratives — risk often wins. Can you have creative greatness without it? 

Testing and validating creative ideas

Risk often wins. But risk without validation is carelessness. 

Your creative risks need to be balanced with a consumer-validated strategy. By testing concepts and creative early and often with consumers, you can take risks with creative confidence — refining your concepts to help make sure there’s audience alignment before your launch. 

That’s where consumer insights platforms like Zappi come in — to get insights into your early-stage campaigns in as little as 12 hours. 

With Zappi, you can test your concepts and campaigns with real consumers in a continuous feedback loop, so you can create, test, analyze and optimize with continuous consumer feedback across the entire development cycle. Plus, AI-backed analysis, diagnosis and guidance gives you actionable insights into your campaigns, helping you make strategic creative risks that resonate with your audience. 

While Cannes Lions-winning campaigns are distinctive and innovative, they often share similar strategic and creative foundations. 

Innovative uses of traditional channels, unexpected storytelling, campaigns driven by consumer insights and cultural relevance — winning campaigns share common threads. 

By replicating their formulas and balancing creative risk with early consumer testing, you can create stand-out campaigns that potentially rival Cannes Lions winners.