For decades, the advertising industry treated a Cannes Lions trophy as shorthand for marketing success. Winning meant a campaign had not only impressed peers creatively but had likely shifted culture, built brands, and driven sales. Today, that relationship is under scrutiny.
“Award-winning creativity and business effectiveness are not mutually exclusive, but they are not consistently aligned,” says Eleni Kitra, CEO & Executive Director, Advertising Business Group (ABG). “The industry now has an opportunity to evolve how it defines excellence by placing equal weight on creative impact and measurable business outcomes.”
That sentiment echoes across agencies, consultancies, and industry bodies as marketers grapple with a deeper question: are awards still a proxy for effectiveness, or has creative recognition drifted away from real-world business performance?
Trophies or results?
For Amol Ghate, Managing Director, Middle East, North Africa & Pakistan, Insights Division, Kantar, the answer is nuanced. “There is still a meaningful correlation — but it’s uneven and depends heavily on which Lions, what type of work, and how effectiveness is defined and evidenced,” he says.
Ghate argues the strongest connection exists when campaigns are “brand-building, clearly linked to distinctive brand assets, and built for long-term impact, not just short-term buzz.” But he also warns that the relationship weakens “when awards reward novelty, craft, or cultural commentary without a tight connection to brand and commercial objectives.”
The growing complexity of media ecosystems has further blurred the equation.
“There’s still a relationship there, but it’s not as straightforward as it used to be,” says Linda Kender, MENA Regional Director, Marketing + Media Alliance (MMA). “Now, even brilliant work must survive fragmented media, algorithmic distribution and the need to perform consistently, not just once.”
Built for judges
Kender believes some campaigns today are “designed for juries rather than for markets,” though she cautions against swinging too far toward performance metrics at the expense of bold ideas. “In this region especially, the bigger issue isn’t too much bold creativity, it’s too much safe, optimised sameness.”
Others are far more direct in their criticism of the awards ecosystem.
Hubert Boulos, Founder and CEO, Das Kapital, argues that the real issue is not whether creativity drives effectiveness, but the rise of “fake work” engineered for award juries.
“The question is not about the effectiveness of creativity and awarded work, but rather about the amount of fake work that has invaded and bastardized awards shows like Cannes Lions,” he says.
Boulos insists that genuinely creative work still produces outsized commercial returns. “Real creative work that wins awards drives effectiveness significantly,” he says, pointing to campaigns like Intermarché’s “The Vegetarian Wolf” as proof that creativity can deliver “an unreasonable business advantage.”
Yet he believes the industry has reversed its priorities. “Cannes awards used to be the crowning of great work. Now it’s the other way round: the objective is to win at Cannes, so you build your idea and case study around it.”
Yet others argue the issue is not the awards themselves, but how brands and agencies activate them afterward.
“Awards only drive effectiveness when approached purposefully. The real value comes in what happens after the win,” says Patrick Samaha, founder of Eleveight.
That frustration reflects a wider shift in how agencies and brands define success internally.
For Catherine Bannister, Chief Strategy Officer, TBWA\RAAD, awards are no longer the end goal but “a validation.” She says creative success today depends less on traditional advertising metrics and more on whether campaigns become culturally participatory experiences.
“The work that performs best, both commercially and creatively, is work that invites participation,” she says. “When consumers don’t just see a campaign but enter a brand’s universe, engage with it and shape it, you start to see stronger signals: higher retention, advocacy and long-term brand equity.”
Bannister argues that creativity and effectiveness increasingly reinforce each other when campaigns earn “their place in people’s lives.”
Brave work wins
That convergence between creativity and measurable action is particularly evident in PR and earned media, according to Sinead O’Connor, Senior Director, Current Global MENAT.
“Effectiveness shouldn’t be a separate ambition, it should be baked into every comms campaign,” she says. “If people are seeing your work and not responding in some measurable way, then we need to question its purpose, not just celebrate the creativity.”
O’Connor believes the industry sometimes operates “as an echo chamber, celebrating our own creativity without asking who actually sees it, engages with it, or acts on it.”
Instead, she says the strongest campaigns are built with “integrated thinking from the very beginning,” embedding PR, earned media and influencer strategy into the creative process from day one.
The data, meanwhile, still strongly supports bold creative thinking.
Tiago Bastos, Head of Creative, Think Human Creative, dismisses the debate entirely. “People love debating this. I’ve stopped,” he says.
Bastos points to major campaigns that produced measurable commercial impact, including Heinz’s “It Has To Be Heinz,” which he says delivered “50% US retail sales growth,” and Samsung’s “Flipvertising,” which “sold 34% more phones.”
“The pattern is always the same,” he says. “Brave work. Consistent commitment. Real results.”
Ultimately, despite disagreements over awards culture, most of the executives converge on one conclusion: creativity still matters more than ever, but the industry is redefining how success is measured.
As Ghate puts it: “Creativity is the growth lever, and outcomes are the success criterion.”
