Cannes Lions 2023

The winning work from this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity represents the industry’s drive for change. Although there is still a way to go in making this industry a space that represents all parts of society it was great to see a benchmark set for the future of creativity and representation.

It’s great to see so many of our member agencies in the mix of the winning work this year. We’re incredibly proud of all the amazing work they’ve created, from Unforbidden Fruits to Marmite's first 4D baby scanner, check out all of the Cannes Lions content in our roundup pinboard.

At Landor & Fitch’s event ‘Cannes Forward’, the agency unravelled some of the key takeaways from this year’s festival. The topic which resonated the most with the audience was the idea of ‘hating now’. The theme takes a deep dive into people either being too nostalgic or focusing too much on the future, that they forget to focus on the present.

This theme was also entangled with talks of AI, with the argument being made that whilst new technologies are helping creativity, it also opens up the questions around wether we focus enough on just being present.

AI continued to open up another theme around ‘deep tech’. This was the idea that campaigns with AI integrated into the message, created empathy. Dove’s ‘Reverse Selfie’ campaign by Ogilvy saw young girls reversing the effects of heavily edited selfies, that used the popular ‘Bold-glamour’ effect on instagram. The end result was their natural beauty, promoting the issue around self-confidence being damaged by social media.

Overall, at this year's festival the energy and excitement for the potential that AI brings was palpable. The winning work was also a great eye-opener to the new world of tech and how the industry can use this to embrace change and represent diversity within advertising.