Didn’t get to fly to the south of France for the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this year? Never fear: the official full report on the entire week of creative buzz is available for download.

However, while these top trends are handy for those looking to read up while saving some carbon credits, it’s wise to wary. After all, a desk and a computer screen is a dangerous place to do marketing strategy.  

Here at TRA, we’re passionate believers in the art of knowing people. That’s why we thought we’d add some insight to these themes from the on-the-ground research we do with real people in New Zealand and Australia.

The omnipresent AI debate

Google is an organisation that claims to have been an ‘AI-first company’ since 2016. At one of the Cannes talks, James Manyika, Google’s SVP of Research, drew a parallel to art and photography, explaining how photography ended up complementing painting, (rather than obliterating it), eventually evolving into an art form of its own.

“AI is just raw clay. It takes people with curiousity, creativity and compassion to harness AI’s rich potential” – Robert Wong, VP Creative Lab, Google  

TRA’s approach to exploring the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and risks of AI has followed this mode of thinking. As TRA’s Head of Data Tony Lai states: “Think boldly about how you can save time and move fast with automation.”

Lots of marketers are experimenting with AI, but simply ‘doing AI’ isn’t going to drive sales. The trick is to find original, surprising ways to use AI that helps customers do what they’re trying to do and use it to solve real-life problems in remarkable ways.  

AI is a hot topic right now, but people have seen it in action for some time. A Kiwi example from a decade ago is the 2014 AS Colour ‘Colourmatic’ campaign by FCB, which transformed their shop window into an AI-powered virtual colour critic, helping customers try on a colour complementary to their skin tone. This lifted sales by 16% and reinforced AS Colour’s brand positioning as the home of more colourful clothing.  

New ways to build brands

We believe there are no new ways to build brands. Brands exist in human minds, and human minds haven’t changed much for a very long time.

However, what is new is the emergence of frameworks – frameworks marketers can use to clearly explain brand-building and its commercial value to their teams and non-marketing stakeholders.  

In the wake of economic constraints and heightened scrutiny on organisational budget allocation, TRA has been engaging with several of New Zealand’s leading CMOs to help them define a clear narrative for how brand growth contributes to business growth. This includes defining the metrics essential to measure marketing investment's commercial advantage – and the interrelationships between these metrics.

When big marketing decisions need to be made quickly and collaboratively, it helps to have everyone on the same page, speaking the same language, engaged in a culture of creative effectiveness. That’s where a well designed framework can focus everyone on what matters, rather than getting distracted by all the other noisy data and rogue opinions.

A global leader in using these kind of frameworks to build a creative effectiveness culture is CMO of Telstra in Australia, Brent Smart. Brent’s experience in leading marketing teams, as well as leading creative agencies, puts him in a unique position to harness creativity for business growth.

Creativity and originality

Creativity is one of TRA’s core values, along with Clarity and Collaboration.

Creativity is about originality. For marketers, this means creating surprise by ‘zigging’ where others are ‘zagging’, breaking patterns and upturning expectations to grab attention. The root meaning of the word ‘advertise’ is to turn towards. Creative originality in advertising turns people towards the thing you’re trying to sell.

‘The Last Performance’ campaign by Special Group for Partner Life surprised audiences of the local murder mystery show The Brokenwood Mysteries by bringing the murder victim from each episode back to life, just before the credits, to talk about the value of getting life insurance from Partners Life. This surprising yet relevant ad placement turned people towards Partners Life, driving a 135% increase in visitation to Partners Life website. It also won the Grand Prix in the Health and Wellness Lions.

Business growth (or progress against objectives in Government communication) doesn’t happen just because you’ve turned heads. Grabbing attention is a necessary starting point, but the next job is persuasion. Here’s where creative originality is required to position your offering to stand out from competitors in a desirable way.

Turners Car Auctions have done an amazing job of repositioning their brand from being just another car seller to being New Zealand’s biggest (and most passionate) buyer of cars. The surprising, hugely loved, and highly memorable character Tina from Turners turns heads, after which the ads get to work demonstrating Turners’ enthusiasm for buying cars, and why Turners is the best option.

Once you’ve persuaded people your offer is best – you can apply creativity to make it easy and fun.

McDonald’s Monopoly is a classic example of this. Far from a standard promotion, McDonald’s creates fun through gamifying the experience of buying their products. The combination of instant and higher-stakes prizes makes it exciting to take part. McDonald’s Monopoly has now become an activity many New Zealanders enjoy taking part in.

There is one more thing that the most original creativity achieves for brands: fame. Humans are social animals: we look to what others around us are doing and saying to inform our own behaviour. Brands and campaigns that get talked about get a 'fame advantage'.  

At TRA, we call these ideas and experiences 'Remarkable' – so original and rare that they cause people to remark upon them. It’s this resulting chatter and buzz that snowballs into fame. Fame signals popularity, and what’s popular is what we head towards.  

Community-centric creativity

Remarkable creativity gets initial attention and buzz, but communities of fans spread that buzz and make things famous. It’s worth considering how to create ideas and experiences with a community-first approach.

A useful way to think about community is ‘common unity’ – what unites this group of people? How can your creative idea give them more common unity? Then, when you’ve got your community buzzing and bonding, how do you amplify that buzz to new users outside your existing community?

Skinny’s ‘Friend-vertising’ is heralded as a global best-practice example of this approach done well. Skinny used the power of word-of-mouth to draw attention to the brand’s impressive performance in customer satisfaction awards. The campaign enlisted numerous happy customers to advocate for the brand to their friends and family. Skinny's subsequent ‘Phone it in’ campaign extended this idea through recruiting Kiwis to record Skinny radio ads on their mobile phones for free, avoiding the expense of celebrity voice talent and recording studios. The campaign earned the Grand Prix for Radio and Audio along with a Silver and Bronze Lion.

Another example includes Whittakers, who address their audience as ‘chocolate lovers’ and get their community talking through unexpected product innovation and collaborations. Mitre 10 also lean into their own DIY community through their ‘With You All The Way’ brand advertising, brought to life through helpful customer service in-store, ‘Easy As’ Guides, and their long-term ‘How-To’ content series for NZ’s DIY community.

Creating opportunity in a polycrisis

This theme is a bit of a hangover from the ‘worthy’ Cannes Lions of old, suggesting that brands and ad agencies can save the world. However, there are some examples that did create real change.

TRA helped DDB explore an idea that came to life for Team Heroine, a women’s sport marketing agency – ‘Correct the Internet’. This tool enabled search engine users to correct search results failing to include achievements of women in sport. The campaign gained further support from 50 global brands.

'Correct The Internet' was a campaign with a strong message and a big idea that the audience were invited to participate in to create change.

Campaigns like this can become powerful forces for change. But it’s important to note that reflecting the ‘polycrisis’ back at people may not be the best way to resonate. Furthermore, big participatory ideas are difficult to execute in a way that retains lasting participation. There are scenarios where newness is not the answer in unstable times.  

Big established brands can use their familiarity to play a role as beacons of stability for people, while smaller brands should take note of the power of consistency in long-term brand building.  

PAK’nSAVE’s Stickman and ASB’s Ben and Amy are great examples of a brand continuing to show up like itself, with warmth and positivity during the COVID-19 pandemic and cost of living crisis. Kiwis are doing it tough right now, but they don’t need to be constantly reminded of this in advertising. Take a look at our Favourite Ads survey, in partnership with ThinkTV, and you’ll see that this list is dominated by optimistic, warm and humorous campaigns from big familiar brands.  

Putting the themes to good use

The themes from the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity are useful thought-starters for creating work that stands out and gets people talking.  

However, whether or not a campaign is effective depends on the brand getting the credit (brand attribution) and on the campaign being persuasive in changing attitudes and behaviours.