What happens when advertising becomes entertainment? This is a fundamental question that the Entertainment Lions category at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity seeks to answer.
Since its inception in 2016, the Entertainment Lions category has been a showcase for exhibiting entertainment content creation that serves as a lever for innovation in traditional advertising. One of the main objectives is to highlight campaigns that transform brands into part of the culture. The Entertainment Lions is currently one of the highlights of the festival, emphasizing the power of entertainment as an effective marketing strategy.
In a highly competitive market, major brands are increasingly recognizing the importance of entertainment as a powerful tool for engagement and connection with the audience. It offers brands an important avenue to tell their story, build emotional connections, and enhance the visibility of their products and services. And what does the audience bring in return? In most cases, the generation of conversations in a large virtual word-of-mouth (buzz) that can be quantified and qualified, increasing brand awareness, increasing engagement in owned channels and campaign pieces, even if promoted by other partners - influencers or major celebrities, consideration of purchase, and the loyalty of consumers who have already been related to the brand or category for a longer time.
Entertainment moves trillions of dollars around the world
According to the Global Entertainment & Media (E&M) Research report conducted by PwC in 2022, the E&M industry reached global revenue of USD 2.3 trillion. This number can be considered one of the post-pandemic effects, as there was a super repressed demand generated by social distancing, where people began to seek new forms of finding leisure, through technology and entertainment. In the same year, another data was surprising: music streaming became the largest source of income for musicians and helped increase their earnings by more than 25%, totaling 10.3 billion euros” (2023, Forbes).
An opportunity to understand the power and dimension of the entertainment industry is through the Cannes International Festival of Creativity, which is in its 77th edition, establishing itself as one of the most anticipated festivals of the year with various award categories.
The jury in the Entertainment category in 2022 and 2024
Patrícia Moura, founder and CEO of Pride Content is at the same time a newcomer and a veteran of the festival. Throughout her career, she never had the opportunity to attend the event held annually on the French Riviera and dreamed of it, but in 2022, after having been the Content and Real Time Leader of Rock in Rio Lisbon and Rock in Rio Brazil in previous years, she was invited to be a judge in the Entertainment category of the Festival in the shortlist modality - a preliminary work that some judges do with the intention of defining which campaigns deserve to advance to the next stage of judgment. This year, Patrícia returns to Cannes as the main judge of the Entertainment category and, again, will be able to collaborate to define what is excellence in global branded entertainment.
Entertainment winners in 2022 and 2023
Branded content gains maximum evidence at the Festival when some of the winning brands in the category achieve the Grand Prix, that is, the Grand Prize! Some of them surprise with creativity and escape the “expected rankings” of the most competitive brands in festivals, such as the case of the Swedish Food Federation, which won the Grand Prix in Entertainment in 2022 (when Patrícia was a judge) with the case “Eat a Swede”.
The campaign created by McCann addressed and promoted sustainability in meat consumption, in a format called “mockumentary” - a genre of film or television program that simulates the format of a documentary, but with fictitious content, usually with the intention of satirizing the subject addressed.
In an 18-minute documentary, “Eat a Swede” features an actor disguised as a scientist who tries to convince national artists to donate their DNA to generate protein in the lab. The satirical and unusual approach draws attention to a global challenge that is very serious: the production of food en masse in the coming decades, which leads the audience, after many laughs, to want to know what are the proposals of the Swedish Food Federation.
“I was mesmerized, disturbed, entertained, amused, and hungry all at the same time,” stated Maria Garrido, the jury president of the Entertainment Lions, formerly CMO global of Vivendi, in France.
The Brazilian case "Los Santos +3ºC" by VMLY&R for Greenpeace was awarded Gold in the Entertainment category, through a striking campaign aimed at raising environmental awareness among the population. The city of Los Angeles, renamed "Los Santos," was recreated in a digital environment to show the tangible effects of climate change, and through an immersive experience, simulate scenarios of global warming based on scientific projections, offering a forecast of what the future may hold in terms of environmental impacts.
In 2023, the big revelation of the Grand Prix in both the Entertainment Lions and the Entertainment Lions for Gaming categories was awarded to "Clash from The Past" by Wieden+Kennedy from Portland, USA. In celebration of the 10th anniversary of one of the biggest global games of recent times, "Clash of Clans," a documentary was created telling a fictional story as if the game had existed since 1982.
Is entertainment right for my brand? From the perspective of Cannes, the answer is a resounding YES.
In the realm of Entertainment, major brands are increasingly using advertising as a strategic tool to connect with audiences through captivating stories. These often include topics of global social relevance. However, this approach is not a hard-and-fast rule, as seen with "Clash from the Past," which primarily aims to entertain and engage its fan base—demonstrating that entertainment for its own sake still has a valuable place.
In the context of branded entertainment, while creative strategies in media and retail can certainly complement one another, they should not overshadow the primary focus. This approach allows brands to enhance their engagement and relevance, connecting more profoundly with their audiences.
From this stage of awareness and maturity in marketing areas, we can believe that entertainment has become an indispensable element for brands on the global scene, offering a powerful dose of innovation to generate attention, engagement, and connection at strategic campaign moments. The focus of brands on entertainment, in the medium and long term, results in an increase in brand relevance and authenticity, bringing visibility, recognition, and presence in the minds and conversations of audiences, as well as enhancing the potential for loyalty, since we are talking about a relationship that transcends the rational.
We are looking forward to what is to come in this category in 2024.
By Patrícia Moura with the collaboration of Vanessa Rodrigues.
Comments