Broadening the Definition of Creativity

“Well, we do have this one thing we’re working on… but it’s not really very Cannes,” is something we hear from time to time. 

Advertising’s creative landscape has evolved dramatically, particularly over the last 10 years, and Lion recipients are becoming increasingly diverse to match. Winning work is coming from an increasingly diverse set of players, and this is reflected in some of the multidisciplined juries that bring unique perspectives to the debate. 

Cannes Lions winners are emerging victorious from the Palais award shows and descending those (in)famous red steps, wielding shiny new Lions not just for ads and art anymore but also for PR, products, platforms and IP.

A noticeable shift

Adland is famed for its love of buzzwords. These normally fall into one of two types: the disposable jargon that helps to describe fleeting trends or paper over the gaps in our collective understanding (remember phygital or advertainment?); or a word or phrase that was always right under our noses, but which takes on a new, more powerful meaning – think of storytelling, for example. Then there are the real rarities – sometimes a word or term is born with a beautiful, inherent simplicity, which perfectly articulates something that was, until that moment, undefinable. 

Among the juries at the Cannes Festival in 2017, there was a shared and very tangible feeling that the body of work that emerged that year felt different from previous seasons. The shift was hard to describe, but certainly noticeable. Many will claim the term that emerged to very elegantly describe the fresh breed of work as their own. But whoever coined it in the recesses of Cannes’ jury rooms, its birth was a bright light bulb moment – The New Work.

The New Work is work that sits beyond advertising. It is work that creates, or changes culture. It crosses multiple channels of traditional advertising and crosses over into the worlds of innovation, product design, commerce and experience.

“The New Work is work that sits beyond advertising. It is work that creates, or changes culture. It crosses multiple channels and crosses over worlds.”

Life-changing work

We talk about work entering culture, but what about work that enters the curriculum? Cannes jury members were suitably wowed by Channel 4’s We’re The Superhumans, the campaign by Blink Productions and 4Creative that’s now studied by students in the UK as part of the national curriculum. We hear a lot about life-changing creativity (it’s a phrase we use at Cannes Lions to talk about Lions Health), but Northwell Health’s development of a prosthetic leg that enabled amputees to go swimming gave the term real meaning. 

Above: C4's We're the Superhumans

Even some of Cannes Lions’ harshest critics give the festival credit for broadening the definition of creativity, especially since we launched the new awards architecture for 2018. Industry luminaries have rejoiced in the reconfiguration of a framework that now allows for a new breed of creative mastery and turns a spotlight on the emerging facets of contemporary creativity. 

Mark Tutssel, global CCO of Leo Burnett, described the new architecture as reflecting “the way that we as an industry conceive, create, craft, innovate and, most importantly, impact our clients’ businesses today.” 

If we and Mark are right, this is how the New Work can grow.

There seems to be a consensus that environments, frameworks and cultures that allow such work to flourish should be celebrated. I’ve just spent three years working with creative leaders of different stripes to develop the awards architecture that we recently unveiled for Cannes Lions 2018. The Cannes Festival structure just facilitated. The architecture actually came from the industry itself – and that’s important to remember. 

Above: R/GA's Chloe Gottlieb 

It’s about transcendence

On stage at Cannes this year Chloe Gottlieb [above], EVP/CCO, R/GA USA, referred to the New Work as “more important than whether or not it’s a film. It’s about the idea, and transcendence”. And I couldn’t have put it better myself. 

I have to thank the many contributors who helped to carve out the way forward for the awards, and we’re excited to see the work that will emerge at the festival in 2018 – the diverse New Work. The work that is “not really very Cannes”.