Forget cheating, WARC reveals how to win big at Cannes

This year’s Cannes Lions might have been mired in allegations of cheating but for those brands which are looking ahead to next year, prioritising consistent creative and embracing fun and disruption are likely to be the keys to success.

So says the “Creative Effectiveness Lions 2025 – Insights from the Winners” report from WARC, which identifies trends and themes common to the award-winning campaigns at this year’s event, rewarding creativity that has also met business goals and driven sustainable impact over time.

Based on WARC’s analysis of the entries and the jury’s deliberations, the report claims to unearth insights into what makes a campaign both creative and effective, offers a behind-the-scenes view on the strategies that led to success, and provides takeaways for advertisers, agencies, media owners, people and planet.

The three key themes from the winners of the Creative Effectiveness Lions 2025 have emerged:

Compound creativity drives long-term success: Brands that stick with creative platforms or themes, and allow them to build and strengthen over time, achieve greater recognition, loyalty, and financial returns.

System1 research presented on stage at this year’s Cannes Lions festival by SVP of global partnerships Andrew Tindell found that the most consistent brands generated, on average, 27% more very large brand effects, such as awareness, differentiation, and salience, and 28% more very large business effects.

Shot on iPhone (pictured), the longest-running campaign in Apple’s history, and awarded this year’s Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix, reported 14 billion views over its ten-year run and has seen iPhone consistently ranked as the #1 smartphone camera, resulting in 5 percentage points of growth in market share since 2015.

Silver winning Dove’s Real Beauty launched in 2004 also demonstrates how consistency delivers results.

Having a sense of humour pays off with audiences: WARC’s report into what is working in humorous advertising, outlined how amusing ads trigger brain reward systems, making messages more memorable and distinctive. A study by The Martin Agency has revealed that 72% of people would choose a brand that uses humour over a competitor that does not, and 91% prefer brands to be funny.

The 2025 Creative Effectiveness jury recognised that many campaigns aimed to induce laughter in audiences had also paid off for brands that commissioned them.

Gold Lion winning campaign The Misheard Version for British eyecare brand Specsavers, skincare brand CeraVe’s bronze winner Michael CeraVe, and cat food brand Sheba’s The Gravy Race, which also won a bronze Lion, all leaned into laughs to increase impact.

Market disruption creates breakthrough results: Brands challenging their sector’s status quo achieve significant advantages over competitors. The jury highlighted skincare brand Vaseline’s bronze winner Transition Body Lotion which disrupted the skincare category by becoming a cultural moment that demonstrated how addressing the needs of a specific, underserved community could lead to business success.

Meanwhile, the silver Lion awarded campaign Find Your Summer for Magnum encouraged consumers to enjoy ice cream during the winter months, breaking the seasonal sales slump. And, finally, McDonald’s No Smiles silver-winning campaign redefined its workplace culture to attract Gen Z employees by promoting authenticity over forced smiles.

On the judging process, jury president Andrea Diquez, who is global chief executive of GUT, said: “Everything this jury saw had won or been shortlisted for creativity in a previous year, so the body of work is always very impressive.

“When evaluating the entries this year, it was critical for us to assess the boldness of the ideas together with the significance of the impact. We were looking for work that was courageous and authentic.”

WARC awards lead John Bizzell added: “Prioritising consistent, long-term, emotionally resonant creative that challenge category conventions while remaining culturally relevant and authentic, is the key to creative effectiveness.

“Having spent two long days in the jury room, I learnt exactly what you need to do (and not do) to come out on top in this category. Focus your energy on telling the jury the story of the campaign’s impact. It breaks down to three simple things: connect your results to your objectives, keep it simple, make it interesting.”