Cracking the Creative Code

Creative minds, insight professionals and marketers gathered in the Kantar apartments at Cannes Lions to learn from the winners of creative excellence partnership The Works on what makes a great ad tick.

Hosted by Russell Parsons, Editor of Marketing Week, the lively panel discussion comprised Lynne Deason, Head of Creative Excellence at Kantar; Georgina Bradford, Foods Brand Experience Marketing Director at Unilever UK & Ireland and Jamie Peate, McCann’s Head of Effectiveness & Strategy Director for Aldi.

The marketing and brand panellists were drawn from winners of The Works, a partnership run by our Trust Working Group with Kantar and Marketing Week, which looks at the ad campaigns that generate the most positive public response – and finds out what marketers can learn from them.

The session focused on ads from two completely different media – a 10-second Facebook short of Marmite’s Pancake Day squirrel contrasting with the TV journey of Aldi’s Christmas winner, Kevin the Carrot.

The panellists immediately settled on the crucial secret to the effectiveness of the two campaigns in the spotlight: their joy and humour. This echoes research on trust in advertising from our thinktank, Credos, which found that creativity and entertainment are the number one drivers of the public’s trust in our industry’s work.

They also discussed the importance of tailoring your content to both audience and media type. In fact, The Works examines ads from different media each month, with the aim of distinguishing the distinct learnings when designing content.

The audience was provided with three main takeaways from each panellist.

Ensure you have a clear strategy, anchor your campaign in a human understanding of the audience, and tailor your work to the context of the audience’s experience, were the tips from creative effectiveness expert, Lynne Deason at Kantar.

‘Comedy, it’s a funny way of being serious’, said Aldi campaign lead Jamie Peate, quoting great actor Peter Ustinov. The power of humour to tackle challenging topics in advertising should not be underestimated, Jamie added.

Don’t be afraid of the power of consistency, Unilever’s Georgina Bradford advised, drawing on the endurance of Marmite’s Love It or Hate It slogan.

Lastly, an insight from our host, Russell Parsons, who emphasised that it is only right that we should celebrate what we do and the impressions that we leave in people’s minds.

To sum up, that’s what makes The Works effective in itself!

Attendees were also lucky enough to take away a shiny brochure of all the winning campaigns, with quotes from some of our Trust Working Group members, the AA’s Stephen Woodford, IPA’s Paul Bainsfair and ISBA’s Phil Smith. Take a peek in the gallery below.

You can find out more about The Works on our dedicated hub here.