An open letter to Cannes Lions: you want to do extra for Brand Experience & Activation

We are the individuals who create the moments that Cannes competition goers go back and forth from all ends of the earth to ride. The moments at the seaside. On the water. In the golf equipment, eating places, and bars. On best of constructions and underneath the celebs.

The moments they convey house with them like souvenirs.

Like the remainder of the trade, we’re entrepreneurs. Strategists, copywriters, artwork administrators, ingenious administrators, manufacturers, account managers, and trade leaders.

But we also are architects, engineers, and world-builders. The ones who cannot best dream it but additionally do it.

We are the Brand Experience & Activation class. And it’s time for Cannes Lions to take those 3 steps ahead.

1. Redefine the class

The Brand Experience & Activation Lions have been presented in 2018 – an evolution of the Promo & Activation class.

Cannes Lions recently defines the class as paintings that “celebrates creative, comprehensive brand building through the next level use of experience design, activation, immersive, retail, and 360° customer engagement.”

It’s a tight definition. But its software has ignored the mark.

The inaugural Grand Prix winner, Today at Apple, used to be a masterclass in emblem ride. But in next years, winners within the class have skewed towards sensible paintings that’s not, through any truthful definition, ride or activation.

The pattern has no longer long gone neglected. In 2023, Contagious reported that experiential entrepreneurs have been increasingly more pissed off that “their space was being co-opted by case films with little to no real-world interaction.”

Is it nice paintings? Without a doubt, sure.

Is it emblem ride or activation? Disappointingly, no.

It’s time to paintings with trade mavens to write down a greater definition of the class. And to explain that this isn’t a catch-all class for anything else underneath the French Riviera solar.

It isn’t referred to as the Everything class or the Whatever or Doesn’t Fit Anywhere Else class. It is a selected class for a explanation why. Brand Experience & Activation isn’t ambient promoting. It isn’t a one-off product stunt. It isn’t a platform marketing campaign with a facet of reside. Brand Experience & Activation merits to be as obviously outlined and safe as Film, Outdoor, PR, or Direct.

Brand Experience & Activation is a class for a explanation why. To fail to outline it obviously and acknowledge the creativity and craft all for it’s to snub the tens of hundreds of execs who concentrate on it.

To fail to outline the class may be to disclaim the way forward for our trade. The paintings that is going on in emblem ride at this time is actually redefining and, one may even argue, reviving our trade fully. Because as greenbacks shift clear of “classic” mediums equivalent to movie and radio, bet the place they’re transferring?

That’s proper – emblem ride and activation. In 2024, experiential advertising and marketing spend within the U.S. crowned $43 billion, in line with the Event Marketing Institute. Globally, Forrester tasks that experience-led methods will outline the following technology of purchaser expansion.

2. Recognize the skill at the back of the paintings

On April 17, Cannes introduced its Awarding Juries, and this week, the shortlists and winners are being published. Once once more, no longer a unmarried juror within the Brand Experience & Activation class hails from a expert experiential company.

Not one.

With appreciate to the people decided on, that is the an identical of getting the Film Lions judged through individuals who’ve by no means sweated each sentence of a script. Or, the PR Lions judged through creatives who’ve by no means controlled a disaster. Or, the Design Lions judged through account executives who’ve by no means used Photoshop.

Brand ride is a craft. And like every craft, it merits to be judged through individuals who perceive its technicalities, equipment, timelines, and terrain. People who know what it takes to open a rift into some other universe, construct a dance ground underwater, or recreate a complete the town from a sci-fi display. People who design no longer just for have an effect on, however for interplay.

This isn’t about gatekeeping. It’s about experience. Cannes has made daring strikes prior to in updating its juries to replicate craft and illustration. It’s time to do the similar for one of the vital swiftly rising and influential classes in advertising and marketing.

3. Award the hell out of our creativity

In 2018, a competitor of ours, Giant Spoon, labored with HBO and different businesses to create an ride that individuals nonetheless discuss as of late – SXSWestworld. Did it win a Lion? Yes, however no longer within the Brand Experience & Activation class. It gained Gold in Outdoor underneath the subcategory of Immersive Experiences.

This 12 months, as at all times, loads or even hundreds of experiential entrepreneurs can be at the floor running across the clock to verify the competition is transformative for each Cannes and the myriad of manufacturers who can be activating there.

It’s time for exchange. The individuals who construct Cannes, turn on Cannes, and animate Cannes with unheard of creativity deserve greater than running the Croisette. They need to be celebrated at the Palais level.

Your homepage states, “Across a breadth of specialist categories, the Lions celebrate creative excellence and effectiveness in every sector and discipline of the industry – and from every corner of the globe.”

On behalf of a type of specialist classes, I’m maintaining you to it.

Shelley Elkins

CCO, NVE Experience Agency