Authors: Dušan Antonijević and Haris Ličina
Before we set off, we heard many different experiences. Pieces of advice. Recommendations. Somehow, they were all equally accurate, and nowhere near enough to capture the entire show taking place in Cannes.
What everyone warned us about was the heat. However, not just how intense the heat actually is everywhere and all the time – from the temperature to the atmosphere. Our festival experience unexpectedly begins on Sunday, and actually in Nice, and actually for a completely different reason. We were fortunate enough to set off earlier and find ourselves in Nice during Fête de la Musique. Scorching streets, packed with smiling people embracing one another and celebrating at the top of their lungs. Every corner of Nice celebrated in its own way. They celebrated the arrival of summer, music, the sun.
They celebrated something we may not know how to define completely, but unmistakably feel – that magic of the moments when we come together, laugh, and live in the moment. What makes us human.
It would turn out that these moments before the Cannes festival itself, among the very people for whom we create campaigns, would be a foreshadowing of the next five days.
The festival itself begins on very, very little sleep, with an early and fast train from Nice to Cannes. A carriage full of people who have already collected their accreditations and seem fairly prepared. For what, we wonder at that moment, and probably so do they. For the first time, we feel time speeding up, and that feeling will last until the final day. First stop, bienvenue à Cannes.
And immediately, another foreshadowing: a Formula 1 model waiting for us outside the Palais, like an omen of all the speed and excitement to come.
By then, we are already shifting into sixth gear, collecting our accreditations, figuring out what to do with our suitcases, and running around guided by the app, the map, and the festival volunteers whose faces we will come to remember over the next few days. We rush to the terrace, where the first gathering of the young lions awaits us – from every category, from all over the world, all equally excited and confused. And we are all greeted by the heat of Cannes and one message: this is your moment.
That is also where we first meet the “competition”, because, at the end of the day, that is the point. We meet a diverse and colourful group, from filmmakers from Australia and fellow competitors from Germany working on the same brand as us, to colleagues from McCann Kazakhstan, our own – colleagues from Croatia competing alongside marketers, and team Roarway, ready just as they were when they welcomed the FIFA World Cup. Simply realising that we are surrounded by brilliant young people who, in different ways but every single one of them through their ideas, fought for the opportunity to be here raises the excitement. Some of them run off to briefings for their categories, while the rest of us run to explore where we have actually arrived.
Very quickly, one important thing becomes clear to us – there is not just one Cannes festival. There are many, taking place in parallel and living almost entirely separately from one another. There are booths belonging to enormous global brands, which probably appeared on all of our feeds during the festival. From the famous Canva and Pinterest, Meta Beach, Google, TikTok, the Netflix and LinkedIn rooftops, Amazon Port, newspapers such as WSJ or AdWeek, agency spaces, holding companies, and even White Lotus… countless spaces, each with plenty of fans and refreshments, but also refreshing activations that we remember well because there is nothing stopping us from “bringing home” the most entertaining ones. But behind the sea of gift tote bags and ice cream, parallel festivals are hiding – speakers and programming substantial enough for you to spend the entire festival with a single brand, and employees ready to assess very well what would be most useful for each person to take away. Behind the film generated from your image, which you watch from a drive-through cinema on YouTube, is a showcase of the new video generator that Google is preparing to release in the coming months. Behind L’Oréal’s opportunity for us to appear in a mascara print ad is a showcase of Adobe’s ability to format a single image for many different brands at once.
And in each of these spaces, not to say festivals, people notice something new. This year, there were more different content creators and influencers than ever, but also more content aimed specifically at them. From new technologies and opportunities to collaborate with brands to networking and education, an entire festival was dedicated precisely to creators. They themselves were also one of the festival’s biggest topics – from the presentation of the first more systematic research into creators’ long-term effectiveness for brands, to their role in communication strategy and their importance for brands that want to shape culture. From the other side, their side, it is noticeable that the world’s biggest brands are seriously considering them as one of the most important channels of the future. It will be interesting to follow this in the coming years – there is no doubt that an increasing number of creators will come to Cannes, and we will not be surprised when we see them not only as visitors or speakers, but also as competitors to agencies for Cannes Lions. One thing is certain: they have never taken Cannes more seriously, and the content from Cannes has never been better!
In the afternoon, we rush to the gathering of global McCann offices. Yes, we are still on the first day, and even we have the feeling that everything is happening so quickly, while also feeling as though it has already been going on for a very long time.
There, a completely “new” festival awaits us, the one we had been anticipating. Creatives from around the world await news about shortlists and potential Cannes Lions. Predictions are made about who will return home with considerably heavier suitcases. Favourite campaigns are discussed, along with how they came about in the first place. We even meet the team behind one of this year’s favourite, and later awarded, campaigns. The team from FutureBrand São Paulo branded the Amazon to encourage local tourism, using the Amazon itself as the soul of the identity.
It is difficult to determine whether we are more impressed by the visual identity itself, which is incredible, or by this incredible team of young people who executed it so brilliantly. They showed us, once again, that outstanding ideas are sometimes quite literally hiding all around us. And definitely a campaign that made us say: I wish I had worked on this!
With that introduction to the campaigns, the people behind them, and the process that took them from the first idea to a Cannes Lion on the red carpet of the Palais, that one and only Cannes festival appeared. And we quickly realise that the festival’s main stage is not in the incredible activations, the countless yachts, or the spectacle happening everywhere across Cannes. It is not even on the main Debussy stage, where the awards are presented, nor on the red carpet everyone rushes to in order to celebrate what they dreamed of.
The real festival takes place where you least expect it – in the basement.
The basement, or the Basement Stage, is transformed into a gallery and a true treasure trove for the entire duration of the festival. The case boards of all shortlisted work from every category are displayed there. And while the festival continues, so does the judging, meaning that additions will appear beneath these boards over the course of five days – an award that arrives quietly like a badge on the wall before the entire industry celebrates it. If even that is not enough to kill countless hours, there are also plenty of tablets giving you access to – everything. Everything that has ever been at Cannes. From this year’s TVCs, Radio, and Case videos, all the way back to every entry from the past 50 years.
And if even that is not enough, you will notice that at almost any moment, one of the major global agencies is there, guiding some of its clients through the boards. Campaigns they worked on as an agency. Campaigns that left the biggest impression on them, and why. Campaigns they believe could have been better, and how. More than once, we “latched onto” a tour to hear how different agencies see campaigns, see the coming year, and see the future of our industry. Those unplanned tours revealed brilliant campaigns and the processes behind them, and will certainly remain one of the most valuable experiences we are taking home.
And so we spent a great deal of time exploring campaigns that impressed us or looking behind the curtain of campaigns that had impressed us even before we arrived, and which we could now see completely dissected. For example, 600k Network, which in Venezuela showed how, with a little creative use of everyday things such as a QR code, we can help people take democracy back into their own hands and oversee voting. Or how, in Nairobi, they managed to help the dairy industry and farmers facing profit losses due to frequent quality controls and visits to veterinarians by introducing paid leave for cows. We were also impressed by the first Grand Prix for our Greeks, with their campaign The Wedding Rice. By connecting rice farmers with the wedding tradition of showering newlyweds with rice, they helped make a cultural tradition more sustainable, while also giving farmers a way to earn money from something they would otherwise have had to throw away.
Of course, there were also campaigns we already expected to shine, and it was wonderful to see them shine. Could’ve Been a Heineken, which turns the voice messages – or rather, podcasts – we receive from friends into an invitation for a beer. Heinz’s Look Familiar, which finds the Heinz logo everywhere Heinz naturally belongs. IKEA and Made for Life, where it is difficult to know whether the film or the print is better. Or another of theirs, Sleeping Reviews, which showed how even sleep-talking can be a great recommendation for mattresses.
There were countless campaigns that genuinely impressed us for different reasons. Some because of pure craft, that skilled polish required to place a visual and craft a message. Some because they made us laugh endlessly. Some because they solved seemingly unsolvable problems in an incredibly simple way. And many because they simply hit universal human truths in a way we can feel regardless of where we come from, how old we are, or what we love. In that sea of work and boards, we also saw just how enormous the success of our colleagues from Bosnia and Croatia was, as they returned home with Cannes Lions. Bosnia with the brilliant campaign It’s Time to Stop, in the Sustainable Development Goals category. And Croatia with A Cry for Hydration, on pure skill, shoulder to shoulder with Apple, KitKat, Burger King, and Columbia. Both entirely deserved, and both showing that our region can and deserves to have its place among all these campaigns, agencies, and brands.
Inspiration and motivation were everywhere. And we needed them, because the main show we came for was about to begin – Young Lions, Digital.
