New Reports Reveal Cannes Lions Winners’ Anatomy: 89% Social Media, 5% Generative AI

Two reports analysing the winning work of Cannes Lions were released today, as part of a research project established in 2012 by Kurio and Cannes Lions. Nine out of 10 Cannes winners utilise social media as a core element of campaign, states the ‘World-Class Lessons on Social Media Marketing’ report. The inaugural report titled ‘World-Class Lessons on Generative AI in Marketing’ shows that 5% of all the Cannes victors leveraged gen-AI.

The annual ‘World-class Lessons on Social Media Marketing’ analysis has been published since 2012. “We now find ourselves in an era where social media marketing is mainstream, ubiquitous even,” said Jari Lähdevuori, creative director of Kurio and analyst-in-chief of the report. “But our analysis isn’t just about whether or not to use social media, rather how to make it resonate with the consumers.”

One trend that is present among the Cannes Lions social media winners is that real and authentic rules are over staged and dramatised. In 2023, 95% of winners use “evidence marketing techniques”, compared to the 83% in 2022 – the term dubbed by Kurio means that the campaigns show something real and true, as the name suggests. Furthermore, 94% of social winners have real people as part of the campaign compared to the 88% last year. Both of these aspects have been on a steady rise during the years.

Another trend that is picking up pace among the social media victors is purpose. This year 43% of the Cannes Lions winners with social as a key element built their campaign on a bigger why, a solid purpose. “Some say that ‘purpose’ has lately turned into one of the most excessively utilised marketing jargon terms, and that brands should learn to behave in a ‘post-purpose’ market,” commented Jari. “The reality, however, shows that purpose-driven marketing is only now becoming mainstream.”

Another trend in Cannes Lions is that brands are getting better at using influencers. This year 23% of social media victors had influencers at the core of their campaign idea, which is a record-high number. “Marketers have been using influencers more as media placements, as an afterthought to the campaign, but the statistics clearly show that year after year they are getting much better at properly integrating them into the idea itself. This benefits both the marketers and the influencers – and both of their followers, as the executions feel more authentic, entertaining, and inspiring”, Jari commented.

Generative AI enters the stage

5% of all the Cannes Lions 2023 winners tapped into generative AI. The most common way to use gen-AI was to create images, as 3% of the Cannes winners capitalised on it. Looking at the specific image-generation tools, Stable Diffusion was most widely used, followed by DALL-E 2 and Midjourney.

“Even if you weren’t familiar with generative AI before, after November 2022, it was impossible to hide from it. Despite gen-AI platforms such as Stable Diffusion, DALL-E 2, and Midjourney being launched earlier that year, the massive mainstream breakthrough happened with ChatGPT”, commented Jari. “Taking into account the Cannes Lions entry deadline of April 2023, it didn’t leave too much time for the entered campaigns to really capitalise in gen-AI. That’s why we think the 5% is a rather big number. This is also why it can be well anticipated that this number will increase next year.”

When it comes to artificial intelligence in general, 10% of Cannes 2023 winners used it in their campaigns. This means that half of the campaigns that used AI used the generative side of it.

Even though the use of gen-AI is gaining popularity, the number of winners who used AI in general was the same in 2023 as it was in 2019 and 2018, when Kurio published their latest AI reports with Cannes Lions. “The numbers being the same as a few years ago raised two hypotheses. It is possible that these AI crazes come and go, with marketers always tapping into the new shiny toy, or it might be that AI has simply become such an everyday part of marketing campaigns that people don’t state the use of it in their entries,” commented Jari. “Either way, gen-AI seems to be the bigger winner here. This year, at least.”

Cannes Lions is the most significant competition of the marketing & advertising industry, and a leading festival on creativity. The 70th annual Cannes Lions was held on 19th – 23rd June 2023. The World-Class Lessons On Generative AI in Marketing was released for the first time. Its sample was the entirety of the Cannes Lions winning campaigns, spanning all 32 categories, and 479 campaigns. The World-Class Lessons On Social Media Marketing report was released for the 10th time. Its sample consists of winners in eight categories, which collectively express a wide spectrum of marketing: Brand Experience & Activation, Design, Direct, Media, Mobile, PR, Social & Influencer and Titanium. A total of 340 winners were analysed this year.

Download the reports here.