Hear them roar: Top 3 Creative Effectiveness & Strategy Lions by consumer vote

It’s been a tumultuous few years for brands. And now, with inflation and a cost-of-living crisis, increased business demands for results and consumer expectations at an all-time high, creative effectiveness is more important than it has ever been before — all the more reason why it’s a key theme at Cannes Lions this year. 

In a recent report by Cannes Lions and WARC on Marketing Challenges, marketing effectiveness was cited as a major challenge by 64% of marketers, only topped by economic uncertainty (72%). 

To celebrate creativity that truly works for brands, we decided to look into two of the most acclaimed categories at Cannes Lions, linked to effectiveness: Creative Strategy and Creative Effectiveness. 

Behind any great campaign, there is a strong insight, anchored in a consumer truth that has some relevance to the brand. The Creative Strategy Lions celebrates this “idea behind the idea” or campaign strategies that use powerful insight to address a brand challenge, leading to impactful outcomes for the brand (judging criteria is composed of 30% interpretation of business/brand challenge; 30% insight/breakthrough thinking; 20% creative idea and 20% outcome and results.) 

The Creative Effectiveness Lions focuses on the measurable impact of creative work, while still taking into account the idea and strategy (judging criteria is composed of 25% idea; 25% strategy; 50% impact and results). Many of the prior year’s Creative Effectiveness winners also won in Creative Strategy. 

We’ve researched some of the shortlisted ads in these categories with over 3,200 consumers using Zappi Amplify, our advertising research solution that was proven to deliver 30% higher creative effectiveness. Read on to learn about our key findings and dive into the top three most effective campaigns in these categories.

Creative content is the biggest profitability lever marketers can influence. In his 2023 research, Paul Dyson has shown that creative content can multiply your profits up to 12 times! Cannes is all about celebrating the power of creative and a lot of great creative work has been shortlisted across the two categories we focused on. 

So what do most of them have in common? The power of creative distinctiveness harnessed for the brand. 

Our research uncovered a pattern across many of these great ads: They were all seen as being particularly distinctive (scoring significantly above the norm on ad distinctiveness), enabling them to grab attention, stand out and be memorable. 

This distinctiveness was harnessed for the brand — resulting in strong brand recall and making people feel positive towards the brands (brand appeal). Creativity is always uplifting, but the real step change for brands comes only when it’s harnessed for the brand. This is where the creative strategy and creative effectiveness winners really stand out. 

Now let’s have a look at the top three most effective campaigns based on consumer insights we’ve gathered through Zappi Amplify (that were subsequently awarded with some roaring Lions by the jury!).

🦁 Gold Lion for Creative Effectiveness

Top 1% of all ads tested in the US in overall creative effectiveness, reflecting long-term brand building impact. 

Heinz, the most well known ketchup brand in the world, had started to see a decline in its brand affinity. Facing growing competition and a danger of being seen as outdated, it had to reignite love for the brand and reassert its place as the number one choice for consumers.

So Heinz tapped into a seemingly obvious, yet powerful insight: to most, ketchup equals Heinz. To tell this story, they asked people across five continents to draw ketchup.

The result? Almost every person drew a bottle that looked like Heinz ketchup, with the words ‘Heinz Ketchup’! The team turned this experiment into a global campaign across digital, out of home and TV, delivering a 12% sales lift on a brand that already owned more than half of the ketchup market share.

And consumers loved it! Thanks to its high distinctiveness and immediate connection to Heinz, the campaign was able to reach and resonate strongly with consumers - with both the overall emotion and love scores specifically being significantly above our norms. 

And most importantly, the campaign delivered the desired consumer response, with brand appeal scoring highly above the U.S. benchmarks. People enjoyed the cleverness in the reveal (or reminder!) that they were just asked to draw ‘ketchup’ but they all (apart from the mustard man) drew a Heinz Ketchup bottle. The whole story and the small details were seen as inclusive, original, humorous and authentic, with real brand character coming through.

Here’s what some respondents had to say: 

• “I liked the diversity of the ad and how various people from different countries were chosen to participate. The ad had a sense of unity about it by discovering how people from all over shared the same love/knowledge of Heinz ketchup.”

• “It's original, smart and clear. The twist in the end with the mustard guy is funny. It plays with the brand's popularity and makes people more willing to buy it, because it's the only one worth remembering.

• “I liked the little surprise information that they all drew Heinz, even if they couldn’t spell it. I even liked the guy who drew mustard.”

• “I like that everyone drew the same brand without being told what brand’

🦁 Bronze Lion for Creative Strategy

Top 4% of all ads tested in the US in overall creative effectiveness, reflecting long-term brand building impact.

The Dove brand is well-known for its campaigns surrounding body positivity and healthy self-esteem since launching the Real Beauty campaign in 2004. But in 2020, other brands began mirroring this messaging, causing Dove to see a drop in brand distinctiveness. They needed to update their brand idea to come back into the forefront, so they decided to shift their focus to one of today’s biggest trends: the selfie.

They surveyed young girls to get the answer to the question: What does ‘Real Beauty’ mean in a world of social media? And what they found was shocking. 

According to Dove, over 80% of girls were editing the way they look through retouching apps by age 13, leading to an increase in selfie dysmorphia, cosmetic surgeries and even teen suicides.

So they created the Reverse Selfie campaign to reveal the lengths girls go to in manipulating their selfies and encourage people to have conversations or #TheSelfieTalk.

Through the ongoing work on their Real Beauty campaign, Dove already had a powerful insight that the portrayal of ‘perfect beauty’ in the media is increasingly causing people to be dissatisfied with how they look. After almost 20 years, Dove continued to build on this insight, delivering effective and award-winning work year after year. As Phil Dussenbery said, “a good insight can fuel a thousand ideas, a thousand commercials” — and Dove’s 2022 Reverse Selfie campaign is no exception. 

This campaign really struck a chord with people — focusing on the relevant and resonant topic of self esteem in young girls today, which Dove brought to life in a distinctive, timely and original way. It was no surprise to see this ad cuts through the clutter, with its scores for ad distinctiveness and unaided brand recall significantly above our norms. 

The emotional response from consumers was also strong, especially at the end of the ad. There was considerably more sadness noted, as you’d expect, but more importantly there was empathy and concern about today’s reality for our young people. The call to action at the end to change beauty, build self-esteem and talk to our children about selfies was empowering, gave hope and left them feeling love as the ad closed (and hence rubbing off positively on the Dove brand).

With so many years championing this cause through such creative and powerful ideas executed with perfection, people realize and appreciate the role Dove plays in championing how we see beauty. 

Here’s what some respondents had to say:

• "I like how Dove has stepped forward and is challenging the social media machine and helping our young girls to protect them from the pressure of online social media."

• “Relevant to today and how social media plays a part in girls' self-esteem. Reminded us how important it is to check in with young girls and talk about social media and how they feel. We are all beautiful and don't need to change.” 

• "I like the creativity of experiencing a period of time in reverse of a regular individual. It felt like the viewer was going through an entire morning with the girl in the advertisement when in reality it was a 30 second ad."

• "I love how Dove is going above and beyond to make a difference in the way we feel and the way we use hygiene."

🦁 Gold Lion for Creative Strategy

Top 7% of all ads researched in the US in overall creative effectiveness, reflecting long-term brand building impact.

Since the early 1950’s, Mars’ M&M candy characters have been the face of the brand (and are globally more recognizable than Santa Claus!). But in 2022, the brand started to receive backlash from consumers for making changes to their spokescandies, giving M&Ms the insight that any change to them would trigger massive conversation.   

Rather than avoiding the controversy, for the U.S. Super Bowl (an event that holds a massive opportunity for brands) they decided to flip the conversation about their beloved spokescandies on its head by canceling them and replacing the spokescandies with Maya Rudolph, to be called Ma&Ya’s. Naturally, this move to Ma&Ya’s caused an uproar amongst consumers. 

But that's exactly what the brand wanted: to capture the world’s attention. After releasing a series of ads that followed this change and even a Super Bowl spot that featured Ma&Ya’s, the brand finally announced that the old spokescandies were back for good.  

And consumers loved seeing their favorite characters back! The 15 second TV spot featuring their comeback generated love from the first second — a very unique response to see in any ad.

The original characters were also mentioned as the number one most-liked element in consumer verbatims —  a great reminder of the power of distinctive brand assets, especially those that are so versatile and full of character.

Here’s what some respondents had to say:

• “The whole thing was cute, and a nice follow to the Maya commercials after the rightwing hoorah about the feminine character.”

• “I've always loved the fact that there are multiple colors and that each one has its own personality.”

• “The characters are cute and colorful and I like that they are back for good!” 

• “Slightly humorous and I love the addition of the purple character.”

This campaign not only helped M&Ms to change the conversation and reignite love for the now more inclusive characters, but also helped drive brand appeal and motivate people to purchase, shown in the consumer scores for brand appeal, purchase uplift and persuasion all significantly above the norm.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: The process of making a great ad is a balancing act of art and science. Both are equally as important when making a winning ad campaign — one that is creatively effective. And starting with a real insight relevant to the brand is a huge unlock.

These three campaigns were successful because they started with an insight and then focused on harnessing the power of creative distinctiveness to grab the attention of consumers and become memorable.

We’d like to congratulate each of them on their wins as well as the many other brands who were entered into this year’s Cannes Lions! 

If you’d like to learn more about how to make effective creative, learn how Zappi Amplify can help.