By: Dražen Novak
Trying to answer the question from the title on the main stage of the Cannes Lions festival were Daniel Bonner, Razorfish, and Will Sansom, Contagious Communications. The basis for this lecture was the research that was supposed to show whether it is possible to use large amounts of data to find patterns that will lead us each time to a creative solution that is sure to win prizes.
The study included 15 years of award-winning works from the archives of the Cannes Lions Festival and was extremely thorough. Algorithms of Razorfish analytical team examined 15,000 award-winning works, 294 million words from entry applications, 260,000 names of creative people who were engaged in making these works and 40,000 agencies that applied them.
Data were presented through a series of charts that showed us that the wealth of the country from which a work was sent does not guarantee success, nor the big budget campaigns, or the size of the agency. This is another proof that a strong idea is always what brings the lions in Cannes. We also learned which are statistically the most creative countries, which names appear most frequently, and what is the ratio of women-men in the awarded works. Research also touched upon the client-agency relationship. As with any other relationship, the data showed, there are good and bad periods. But those who have persevered and developed their relationship, climbed the awards stage together. Collaboration proved crucial with the agencies as well, so the applications of works on which several agencies collaborated achieved better results. At the end, the research covered creative teams that created the works. Among them, those that had fewer executives and more lower-level creatives won more awards. Awards were also often won by the teams that had more diverse composition of creatives in charge of certain segments of work.
From all of this, Daniel and Will drew five principles applicable to agencies around the world, regardless of their size. Of course, they also gave the answer to the title question, but to hear it, you’ll have to watch the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8bOwbv5mXU
