Whether or not a matter of time, value or mixture of different components, the advert world isn’t submitting as a lot work to the Cannes Lions Worldwide Pageant of Creativity as prior to now.
This yr, award entries have been down about 1% in comparison with final yr—not a big decline.
However trying again to 2016, which holds the file for many submissions ever, reveals a downward development. Certainly, when evaluating 2024 with 2016, award entries have decreased a big 38%.
From one yr to the subsequent, quantity can drop for quite a lot of causes.
In 2018, for instance, Publicis Groupe paused its participation in award festivals to give attention to creating its synthetic intelligence platform Marcel. Cannes Lions estimated Publicis’ absence contributed to an 8% drop in entries that season.
That very same yr, Cannes Lions restructured the occasion, introducing two new classes (Artistic Ecommerce and Sustainable Growth Targets) and retiring three (Cyber, Built-in and Promo & Activation).
A Cannes Lions spokesperson said in an e-mail that the normal classes that make up the majority of entries have declined since 2016: Print & Publishing, for example, has fallen from 3,777 entries to 734.
“The newer classes, which replicate the work of contemporary businesses and different model companions, don’t drive something like that variety of entries—Artistic Enterprise Transformation, for example, or the Innovation Lions, whereas they spotlight the way forward for the business, obtain a fraction of the normal classes’ historic entry numbers,” the spokesperson wrote.
However sure classes are rising, mentioned Simon Cook dinner, chief government of Cannes Lions.
“We’ve seen continued development within the Artistic Effectiveness Lions, which has acquired the very best variety of submissions since its launch in 2011, demonstrating that there’s a powerful dedication to creativity as a development driver,” Cook dinner mentioned in an announcement.
Cook dinner additionally famous that entries from manufacturers and media homeowners elevated 6% and 31%, respectively, exhibiting the “breadth of funding in creativity throughout the total spectrum of branded communications.”
Regardless of the general decline in award submissions, Cannes Lions is doing nicely in different key areas.
Final yr, Cannes Lions partnered with 110 sponsors, who paid a mean of $329,147 (£260,000), based on an annual report from mother or father firm Ascential. The variety of attendees additionally grew 9% to greater than 12,000. In complete, the competition generated $129 million (£101.8 million) in 2023, up 30% in comparison with 2022.
