Creativity in B2B marketing is spotlighted with new Lions award

B2B has been over­shad­owed by con­sumer mar­ket­ing for decades; but that is about to change. A new Lion award cel­e­brates game-chang­ing cre­ative work in the B2B space that dis­plays both cre­ativ­i­ty and effec­tive­ness in adver­tis­ing prod­ucts and ser­vices pur­chased by pro­fes­sion­als on behalf of busi­ness­es. It will pro­vide the defin­i­tive bench­mark for cre­ativ­i­ty that dri­ves progress in B2B mar­ket­ing glob­al­ly and spot­light cre­ative excel­lence from the B2B mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

A notable increase in B2B creative Lion-winning work

The launch of the Cre­ative B2B Lions was first dis­cussed in 2013, with the award final­ly devel­oped with input and research from indus­try experts, and sup­port­ed by the B2B Insti­tute, a LinkedIn think­tank and strate­gic thought part­ner.

“Many in the indus­try believe that a spe­cial­ist Lion in this area will raise the cre­ative bar and ele­vate the dis­ci­pline,” says Philip Thomas, chair­man of Cannes Lions.

Over the years, a rise in B2B-focused work has won Lions awards across a range of cre­ative dis­ci­plines, high­light­ing the need to spot­light cre­ative B2B mar­ket­ing on the glob­al cre­ative stage. Take 2017’s defin­ing Lion-win­ner, State Street Glob­al Advisor’s ‘Fear­less Girl’ stat­ue as an exam­ple of excel­lence in the space; it won 18 Lions and four Grands Prix.

Creative effectiveness in B2B

Along­side the new Lion, the B2B Cre­ative Effec­tive­ness Code was devel­oped in part­ner­ship with the World Adver­tis­ing Research Cen­ter (WARC) and the B2B Insti­tute. The code, which eval­u­ates 10 years’ worth of B2B effec­tive­ness case stud­ies, found that long-term cam­paigns, broad tar­get­ing and emo­tion­al cre­ative work was large­ly absent from B2B mar­ket­ing. More often than not, mar­ket­ing activ­i­ties were con­cen­trat­ed on sales acti­va­tion and short-term sales-fun­nel opti­mi­sa­tion, with three-quar­ters (76%) of cam­paigns ful­fill­ing these goals.

Just 5% of the 435 case stud­ies eval­u­at­ed by the code’s research part­ner James Hur­man incor­po­rat­ed activ­i­ties that focused on build­ing the kind of long-term strate­gic effects capa­ble of dri­ving a busi­ness for­ward into the future. That means the vast major­i­ty of cam­paigns eval­u­at­ed did not include long-term strate­gic asset build­ing as a goal. This research iden­ti­fies a gap between cur­rent B2B mar­ket­ing approach­es and opti­mal effec­tive­ness.

Along­side the code, the B2B Cre­ative Effec­tive­ness Lad­der was devel­oped to present a hier­ar­chy — from least to most com­mer­cial­ly impact­ful — of the six main effects that B2B mar­ket­ing pro­duces, reflect­ing the objec­tives and results that are more impor­tant to B2B. Designed to be used as a con­tin­u­ous improve­ment tool, it enables the B2B mar­ket­ing and adver­tis­ing com­mu­ni­ty to iden­ti­fy and learn from effec­tive­ness best prac­tice, and to con­sis­tent­ly pro­duce high­ly-effec­tive cre­ative cam­paigns and ini­tia­tives.

By mea­sur­ing case stud­ies against the lad­der, it shows that B2B cre­ative remains dom­i­nat­ed by mar­ket­ing at the least effec­tive end of the spec­trum and is still strug­gling to deliv­er long-term com­mer­cial val­ue. Here lies a huge oppor­tu­ni­ty: cre­ative effec­tive­ness is an under-lever­aged B2B growth dri­ver. And there is a sig­nif­i­cant com­pet­i­tive advan­tage for B2B brands that invest in cre­ative effec­tive­ness and pro­duce B2B work that con­nects with cus­tomers, improves brand health and ulti­mate­ly dri­ves long-term growth.

What does a winning Creative B2B Lions entry need to succeed?

Entries that demon­strate a blend of short-term tac­tics and long-term brand-build­ing strate­gies that con­nect with cus­tomers, improve brand health and ulti­mate­ly dri­ve growth are what will win. The Cre­ative B2B Lions jury will be led by jury pres­i­dent Paul Hirsch, pres­i­dent and chief cre­ative offi­cer at Dore­mus. Hirsch is a cre­ative leader focused on design­ing and shap­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of brands. He spent his for­ma­tive years at Good­by Sil­ver­stein & Part­ners, Leo Bur­nett and Divi­sion of Labor, an agency he co-found­ed. He also co-authored the Ama­zon-chart­ing book Stop Tweet­ing Bor­ing Sh*t.

More than 400 glob­al experts will judge this year’s Lions. The jurors com­plete ini­tial judg­ing remote­ly before com­ing togeth­er in Cannes to award and present the Lions, includ­ing the new Cre­ative B2B Lion. This is a piv­otal moment for the B2B com­mu­ni­ty to come togeth­er and cel­e­brate bound­ary-break­ing work and set the cre­ative bench­mark.

The Cannes Lions Inter­na­tion­al Fes­ti­val of Cre­ativ­i­ty takes place from 20–24 June, in Cannes, France. The Lions will be judged, announced and hon­oured through­out the week. Fur­ther infor­ma­tion on the awards and Lions can be found at canneslions.com.