What does award-winning B2B advertising seem like?
For the primary time because the prestigious Cannes Lions Worldwide Competition of Creativity started within the Fifties, the recently-held 2022 occasion noticed devoted B2B-specific advertising award classes, providing a brand new alternative for B2B entrepreneurs to have their efforts shine on the worldwide stage.
The brand new Artistic B2B Lions occasion and awards have been established together with the B2B group — most notably The B2B Institute — the business suppose tank funded by LinkedIn* that researches the way forward for B2B advertising and resolution making.
Now that the inaugural Cannes Artistic B2B Lions awards occasion has taken place, let’s have a look and see what award-winning B2B marketing campaign efforts seem like in 2022, and the place they might be headed within the years forward.
1 — B2B Advertising and marketing Efforts Shine at Cannes Lions
The Artistic B2B Lions introduced awards in a wide selection of 11 providers and merchandise classes:
- Cross-channel Storytelling
- Model Expertise
- Modern use of Broadcast & Content material
- Focusing on & Engagement
- Effectiveness & Measurement
- Lengthy-Time period Model Constructing
- Breakthrough on a Finances
- Challenger Model
- Company Goal & Social Accountability
- Market Disruption
- Craft in B2B
The B2B model expertise and focusing on and engagement award winner was Spotify, for its “A Tune For Each CMO” entry, which acquired a Bronze Lion for model expertise and a Gold Lion for the engagement and focusing on class.
The Spotify marketing campaign — which used hyper-targeting to ship a music-oriented push particularly to CMOs — resulted in some 75 p.c year-over-year development, main the agency to greater than €1 billion in promoting income for the primary time.
Apple was awarded a Silver Lion within the craft in B2B class for its “Escape From the Workplace” video marketing campaign.
Apple’s long-form nine-minute movie adopted staff from work to residence, and augmented by a sequence of 15-second social media advertisements, the marketing campaign acquired greater than 30 million views in its first month, together with a 353 p.c enhance in web site site visitors.
A whole listing of those and all the different large winners on the first-ever Artistic B2B Lions is accessible on the Cannes occasion web site, highlighting the number of B2B entries submitted.
2 — What The Cannes B2B Awards Tells Us About Future Advertising and marketing Shifts
Having devoted B2B advertising classes at Cannes for the primary time was a significant alternative for B2B manufacturers and entrepreneurs to showcase promoting campaigns in a means that hasn’t been potential till now, and 2023 is more likely to see a larger number of entrants from the quickly altering faces of extra conventional B2B companies.
The pandemic has definitely sparked upheaval within the B2B advertising house, whether or not it’s the shift to digital-first efforts, always-on campaigns, or — because the B2B Institute lately explored with the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, a transfer to class entry factors (CEPs) — cues utilized by prospects to floor reminiscences when confronted with a buying alternative.
Charlotte Rogers lately took a deep dive take a look at this specific B2B advertising shift in “Ehrenberg-Bass: Linking model messages to purchasing conditions wins ‘the thoughts and the market’,” for MarketingWeek, whereas The WARC Podcast devoted an episode to a Cannes presentation on the subject, in “WarcX Cannes Lions: The Way forward for Technique and Ehrenberg-Bass Analysis.”
Throughout his Artistic B2B Lions occasion keynote presentation, LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky pointed to a future pushed by larger artistic promoting, and “creatification.”
“The following twenty years will likely be concerning the ‘Creatification’ of a brand new era of tech companies,” Roslansky noticed.
“The following twenty years will likely be concerning the ‘Creatification’ of a brand new era of tech companies.” — Ryan Roslansky, @LinkedIn CEO Click on To Tweet
“Enterprise-to-business manufacturers are going for broke on model consciousness,” Kenneth Hein, U.S. editor at The Drum, lately prompt in “What We Discovered Concerning the Advert Trade After a Week at Cannes Lions”, happening to notice that, “B2B entrepreneurs are doing Tremendous Bowl spots and hiring Matthew McConaughey as a spokesperson.”
3 — Higher B2B Model Consciousness Alternatives
The primary Artistic B2B Lions occasion and awards introduced the kind of world stage for B2B efforts and all-star alternatives for in-person networking and business studying that may hopefully proceed to develop for years to come back, because the B2B wing of the Cannes festivities expands and matures.
The general lasting implications that Cannes B2B-specific awards can have in B2B advertising will take a while to unpack, as advertising professionals mull over their high take-aways from the week.
Change is without end part of advertising, and its tempo has solely quickened throughout current years, so no matter B2B entrepreneurs discover on faucet throughout subsequent yr’s second-annual Cannes Artistic B2B Lions occasion and awards are sure to be considerably completely different from the 2022 version.
We hope you’ve loved this overview take a look at only a few of the Cannes winners, and a few of the business shifts which might be within the works, and that these insights might help you propel and elevate your individual B2B advertising efforts.
To be taught extra about what it takes to craft award-winning content material, listed below are a few of the associated articles we’ve revealed on the topic:
Creating award-winning B2B video advertising that elevates, provides voice to expertise, and humanizes with authenticity takes appreciable effort and time, which is why an growing variety of companies are selecting to work with a high digital advertising company reminiscent of TopRank Advertising and marketing. Contact us to learn the way we might help, as we’ve finished for over 20 years for companies starting from LinkedIn, Dell and 3M to Adobe, Oracle, monday.com and others.
* LinkedIn is a TopRank Advertising and marketing shopper.
