It’s that time of year again. When digital marketers get to ogle the creativity of the big ad agencies, taking ideas, tips and learnings from the Festival Of Creativity back to their office to try and weave the applicable ideas into client campaigns.
Cannes Lions 2014 drew to a close last week, and as we look back through the mirage of creative content thrown at us, one themed seem to ring around the festival more than ever before – storytelling.
At 8MS, we place digital storytelling at the heart of our digital and content marketing campaigns whenever possible, so it was refreshing to see digital storytelling finally taking centre stage amongst the creative elite. Advertisers need to become more relevant, more personal, more human. This was the key takeaway, with storytelling wrapped around the ‘be more authentic’ tag line.
In previous posts, we’ve covered the rise and importance of transmedia storytelling, and whilst serving content across all consumer devices is important, the most crucial element of any creative content campaign is how well it resonates with an audience. As we mentioned in our recent article in Marketing Week, great content is only great to the people it strikes a chord with. Storytelling allows us to connect on a more emotional level with our audience, so it’s great to see the topic getting some airtime amongst the creative superpowers.
Other Takeaways
Creativity is very much alive – much like writers block, coming up with creative ideas can be tough, especially in an uninspiring environment. There was a wealth of creative energy, ideas and tips coming out of Cannes, which shows that creativity is engine with plenty of miles left to run.
Celebrities sell – We’re in an age where consumers can post a message directly to their idols. From the 70’s to the 90’s, most of us could only muster a poster on the wall, but now we can send tweets to the celebrities we adore. Put an appropriate advertising wrapper around those celebrities and that creates a very powerful message. We can reach a much wider audience – both by demographic and geography.
Real-time – more creative types are trying to come up ideas of how to take advantage of real-time advertising. Social listening and event planning are the first steps to achieving this, but we need to find clever technology wrappers in order to bring real-time targeting into the creative arena.
Be bold – The UK finally broke a six-year creative award drought after Harvey Nichols scooped the best TV ad in the world for their “anti-Christmas” campaign that encouraged viewers to splurge on themselves and scrimp on family gifts. The campaign was praised as ‘remarkably bold’ by the jury.
Were you at Cannes Lions 2014? Let us know your key takeaways in the comments below!