By Joshua Ajayi
Organisers of the prestigious Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity have announced that the 2020 edition of the festival will be taking place from Monday 22 June – Friday 26 June.
The announcement which was made through a release made available to Brand Communicator also revealed new Content Agenda themes, alongside the launch of the Creative Business Transformation Lions. The organisers say that the new elements were devised through industry-wide consultation and in-depth research with the global branded communications community.
According to the release, Cannes Lions gathered feedback from over 1500 customers and executed 100 in-depth interviews with industry-leading Chief Marketing Officers, Chief Creative Officers, brand leaders, strategists and CEOs to inform the 2020 Content Agenda’s eight themes. Each theme is shaped around the most business-critical areas of branded marketing and communications and the Festival now invites the industry to apply to speak on stage and enter their content submissions.
Simon Cook, Managing Director, Cannes Lions, said: “In response to industry need, the 2020 Cannes Lions content themes will set the global agenda for the industry and help us all navigate the year ahead. We look forward to seeing a hugely diverse set of expert speakers from across the breadth of creative and cultural disciplines. Our community attends the festival to learn from best practice, make valuable connections, and take away tools and techniques that will accelerate business and personal performance and unlock creative potential.”
The 2020 content themes are: Creativity is the Business Growth Engine, Creative Disruption in Commerce, Post-Purpose: Brand Accountability and Activism, Your Brand is my Experience, Looking to 2030: Making your Business Future-fit and Applied Creativity: When Data, Tech and Ideas Collide, Storytelling at Scale, Let’s Get Back to Brand.
New for 2020, the Creative Business Transformation Lions are launched in response to the digital disruption that is affecting the way brands and businesses operate. As businesses invest in new ways of working in order to future-proof their business, this Lion celebrates the creativity that drives businesses forward, and the creative thinking that changes how businesses organise themselves, how people work internally and how customers engage. The Creative Business Transformation Lions honour this new breed of work.
Work that wins at the Festival will demonstrate how creative change has been achieved across core business functions, delivering business impact and creating better customer outcomes. This Award covers the breadth of new creative approaches that are used to create value and drive competitive advantage, alongside traditional brand communications. This includes the creation of new products and services, the use of technology and business design, and the reinvention of operations and customer experiences, in order to drive transformative change.
Susie Walker, Head of Awards, Cannes Lions, “We’re expecting entries to come from across in-house and agency teams that provide creative services, consultancy, experience or service design, new product development, innovation and digital transformation, in order to drive transformational change. We continually evolve the Awards, in line with the industry and the new Creative Business Transformation Lions celebrate creativity that can drive tangible business change.”
The Festival has also refreshed the PR Lions for 2020 to ensure the Award accurately represents the current PR industry. Cannes Lions undertook research with PR specialists globally to better understand their unique challenges and perspectives to ensure the PR Lions focus on the areas of creative work that the industry wants to be recognised for today.
All updates to Award categories will be available on the Cannes Lions website in November 2019. Entries to the Lions Awards open on the 16th of January 2020.
Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is the world’s leading celebration of creativity in communications. Founded in 1954, the Festival takes place every June in Cannes, France. As the most prestigious international annual advertising and communications awards, entries from all over the world are showcased and judged at the Festival.
The five-day Festival is the only truly global meeting place for professionals working in advertising and communications. Attendees from nearly 100 countries come to experience five days of workshops, exhibitions, screenings, master classes and high-profile seminars presented by renowned worldwide industry leaders.
Winning companies receive the highly coveted Lion trophy, a global benchmark of creative excellence, for Brand Experience & Activation, Creative Business Transformation, Creative Data, Creative Effectiveness, Creative eCommerce, Creative Strategy, Design, Digital Craft, Direct, Entertainment, Film, Film Craft, Glass: The Lion for Change, Health & Wellness, Industry Craft, Innovation, Media, Mobile, Music, Outdoor, Pharma, PR, Print & Publishing, Radio & Audio, Sport, Social & Influencer, Sustainable Development Goals, Titanium Lions.