Cannes Brand Experience Lions 2022: Highlights

Here are the best of the Cannes Brand Experience Lions of 2022. Brand Experience has quickly become one of the most prestigious categories at the Cannes Advertising Festival. Rightly so. This category has grown to contain some of the most interesting and innovative solutions to business problems in the ad industry.

Brand Experience is a broad category. Creative solutions draw from many different disciplines. Tech, PR, online games and activations, public events. And more. It’s the category where creativity has been stretched.

Interestingly, it’s also one of the most collaborative categories. A successful Brand Experience campaign often has a lot of moving parts, with different divisions of the agency (and outside suppliers) taking ownership of their own cog. A creative team might have come up with the idea, but the lion truly belongs to a much wider group of people.

A deserving Grand Prix winner

This is a seriously great piece of tech developed by Vice magazine. What’s so great is that it adds to the experience of visiting a museum, giving a broader perspective of the artefacts. A beautiful interface, and depth of data makes it something special that I hope will grow and expand into more institutions around the world.

... but, if this won, nobody would complain.

Backmarket uses Apple’s tools against them

This is incredibly cheeky, as well as very sophisticated. It’s a one-off intervention that was publicised and did great things for the client. Watch the case study below to get the full perspective of the idea. A remarkable example of tech and a creative idea working perfectly together.

The beer-glass haircut

The Cannes Brand Experience Lions always throws up some very wild ideas. On paper, I imagine this would have been an incredibly hard sell. But once it was live and out in the world, it completely exceeded any expectations.

This is also an excellent example for young creatives. Restrictions create opportunities for great creative solutions.

Burger glitch.

Taking inspiration from the culture of the target market can be a triumph or a disaster. Burger king did it brilliantly here. It won gold in multiple categories with different juries. That in itself is testament to its quality.

Cadbury and Shah Rukh Khan

Shah Rukh Khan is the number one brand ambassador in India. In this campaign, he makes quite literally thousands of ads for local businesses in India. Except it isn’t him. He’s deep-faked both visually and verbally. It’s incredibly well done. It’s one of the best from the Cannes Brand Experience Lions of this year.

We saw a lot of the metaverse at this Cannes Advertising Festival.

Other metaverse ideas were awarded in other categories, but the Brand Experience category chose this idea. It’s a great idea – but it is difficult for me to judge the impact of the idea as I’ve never been in the metaverse.

That’s the difficult thing about case-study videos. They tell the best possible story about the idea, but it is difficult to judge unless you actually experience it in the environment it was built for. Worth a look though.

Voice Bank for MND sufferers

This is a beautiful initiative. The voice is the core of how we express ourselves, and how we are understood as people. Giving their natural voice back to slurring sufferers is wonderful.

Skittles know how to be fun

For decades, Skittles has built a reputation for excellent creative work. This piece doesn’t just build on it – it improves on it. This is one of the best things they have done for quite a while.

Honda vertical bike

This is a great idea. I hope they produce more than one (this is likely to be a prototype that was made for the sake of the case study) and live up to the promise.

Unfortunately there is a history of product design initiatives that are awarded in the Cannes Brand Experience lions that never actually get produced. Recent examples include ‘Clever Buoy‘, which was apparently a shark-detecting system that was to be deployed in Australia.

Never happened. The agency just wanted a prototype, a case study, and a lion. It’s arguable whether the PR value of the campaign made it worthwhile, however.

Heinz had two campaigns awarded

Which was judged higher in the 2022 Cannes Brand Experience Lions?

Answer at the base of the article.

Play Video about heinz hotdog pact cannes 2022 silver lion

Girls Who Code x DojaCat

When DojaCat released a song that fit with the philosophy of Girls Who Code, they collaborated on a code-able music video.

So, what does human meat taste like anyway?

This is an amazing promotional idea going live on Halloween. If plant-based burgers can taste like beef, or like chicken, could it also taste like human?

The Morning After Island

Another great idea that was awarded in multiple categories. Ideas that align with progressive causes regularly do well at Cannes. This captured the zeitgeist perfectly. I hope this is something real that continues onward. It smells a little like an activation built for a case-study. I hope I’m proved wrong.

Play Video about morning after island cannes brand experience lions advertising

The Inevitable News

Here’s an interesting approach. The campaign is effectively just an online summit. What is different is it’s a discussion about how to talk to people about a social issue. They brought together journalists from across the country to figure out the best way to affect public discourse about gun control.

Play Video about inevitable news cannes advertising festival 2022

Outlaw Runners

This is just cool. A young running brand in Paris took their runners out at night to try and trigger speed and red-light cameras. They made posters from it an promoted it on social.

Play Video about outlaw runners cannes brand experience lions 2022

Unesco and the Ukraine War

Anticipating the loss of priceless public artworks in the current Ukraine war, Unesco built an app that allowed members of the public to scan sculptures, church interiors and so on to archive them for the future.

Play Video about unesco backup ukraine cannes advertising 2022

More on our YouTube Channel

The above are the pick of the bunch, in my opinion. We have more winners in this category on our YouTube Channel you can find here.

And by the way, the first Heinz case study, Hotdog Pact, won silver in the Cannes Brand Exprience Lions. While the second video, Hiding Places, was awarded Bronze.

Agree? Let’s chat in the comments right here.