This is a reason to visit France! I was elated to discover that the Cannes Lions Festival added business-to-business marketing to their creative competition this year. I’ve attended several conferences in and remember how empowering and motivating they were. I knew that this event, which recognizes 826 Lions for creative excellence in the global branded communications industry, was one that I might set my eyes on at some point.

Non-Virtual Reality

The event took place from June 220th – 23rd in Cannes, France, and was officially sponsored by Meta. There were far too many notable brands to mention, but top brands like Amazon, Google, Spotify, Disney, Microsoft, Snapchat, Pinterest, Twitter, Yahoo, and the Wall Street Journal spread out along the Mediterranean Sea to host workshops, chats, keynotes, wellness sessions, lunches, brunches, happy hours and more.

Cannes Lions Awards 2022

The awards were comprised of 9 tracks – classic, craft, engagement, entertainment, experience, good, health, strategy, and titanium – with 28 specialist awards. The part that excited me most about this event was that it was the first year that B2B Marketing was recognized as a part of the engagement category. Sherwin-Williams Coil Coatings won the Grand Prix Award for a campaign called Speaking in Color. Spotify and Apple were among the Gold Lion Winners, Strahl and Pinatex won Silver Lions, and Meta and Heineken won Bronze Lions. There were many other notables. If you’re into marketing you may have seen Spotify’s A Song for Every CMO campaign or Apple’s Escape from the Office. All I can say is great stuff.

#Hashtag My Retweet

And as if that wasn’t enough the topics covered during the workshops were so inspiring. The topics that really stood out to me were Finding the Fan in Everyone, Reconfiguring Retail, The NFT Revolution, Who Do You Want To Be in the Metaverse, Chipotle’s Transformation Story, The Harmony Theory, and Influence 3.0.

Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai, the winner of the Cannes LionsHeat, hosted a session discussing ways to create change with Gen Z.

And here’s a list of some of the celebrities that participated:

• Gold-winning Olympian Tianna Bartoletta
• Chicago Bulls basketball player Zach LaVine
• Writer, producer, and actress Issa Rae
• Actress Regina Hall
• And Paris Hilton
• Grammy Award Winning Recording Artist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist Megan Thee Stallion
• Model, cultural innovator, activist, and businesswoman Naomi Campbell

This event is definitely one that I hope to experience. If you have the time, there’s some great searchable post-Cannes Lions event content on YouTube and LinkedIn that you might enjoy.

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