Analysis

Using the Sociability of the Brand framework, we analysed winning campaigns of Cannes Lions 2022 in order find implications for success in social media marketing. Cannes Lions is the most prestigious festival of marketing and creativity, and thus it offers a one-of-a-kind global set of data for the research. This year there were 25,464 entries from 87 countries.

Our sample consists of winners in eight particular categories: Brand Experience & Activation, Design, Direct, Media, Mobile, PR, Social & Influencer and Titanium. All of these categories have a wide range of different types of campaigns, including social media campaigns. Besides some minor changes in Cannes Lions’ categories over the years, our analysis has stuck to the same categories consistently.

A total of 329 winners were analysed. Since one campaign may win multiple awards, this doesn’t represent the exact total number of campaigns in the analysis.

87% of the winners had social media as a key element of the campaign. These campaigns were further analysed through the Sociability of the Brand framework. It is worth noting in the remaining 13% of the winners, many campaigns had social media involved to a certain degree, even thou not as a key element.

With the help of the framework, we analysed the drivers of engagement of these award-winning campaigns. Using a weighted scale (4x for GP, 3x for Gold, etc.), we calculated the success of each of the different roles in the framework (see image 3 below).

Image 3: The Sociability of the Brand roles and their Cannes Lions 2022 awards

The role of Volunteer was clearly the most effective one in Cannes Lions 2022 with 261 points, which is 54% of all the points. It was also the role with the most individual awarded campaigns: 89 in total. These numbers are pretty much in line with last year, when Volunteer scored 55%.

The second role per weighted points was Sage with 65 points (13% of all). This too is very similar to the results in Cannes Lions 20/21. When it comes to supportive roles for other main roles, Sage was number one (at 64 campaigns supported).

The third position goes to Idol which receives its first-ever top 3 place with a score of 53 points (11%). Almost tied in the next positions are Pitchman at 46 and Master of Ceremony at 42 – the first being the biggest loser of the year and the latter the biggest winner.

Finally it is Muse at 20 points (4%) and Host without any points, which is a first for any of the roles.