As the Executive Director of Marketing and Communication at the UAE Government Media Office and the first government-sector representative worldwide to serve on a Cannes Lions jury, Khaled AlShehhi brings a unique perspective to one of the industry’s most influential awards. In this interview with Communicate, he discusses the balance between creativity and effectiveness, the credibility of award-winning work, the risks of agencies optimizing for trophies over outcomes, and what Cannes success really means for brands, agencies, and CMOs today.
In your experience as a juror, how strongly does “effectiveness” actually influence winning work at Cannes today?
Effectiveness has real weight at Cannes. But it would not be honest to suggest it carries the same weight as creativity, and that is appropriate, because Cannes Lions is a Festival of Creativity. The clue is in the name. The work is judged across four pillars: Idea, Craft, Strategy, and Impact. Three of those four are about the creative dimensions. Impact, which is where effectiveness lives, is the fourth.
Here is what that looks like in practice. Take any major category: PR, for example, where you might have hundreds of shortlisted entries. Almost all of them are creative. The work that wins is the work that ranks high on Idea AND on Craft AND on Strategy AND on Impact. Creative work that ranks low on Impact does not win. It should not win, because the rank does not support it. That is the system functioning as it should.
What I want to say clearly is that there is great work at Cannes that is genuinely effective. It would be unfair, and untrue, to suggest otherwise. Every year, work wins that delivered real outcomes for real clients. The fairer debate the industry should be having is not whether Cannes recognizes effective work, it does. The fairer debate is whether all winning work clears the bar consistently, and whether the gap between the best winning work and the rest of the field is widening as entry volumes grow each year. That is the honest conversation, and it is one the festival itself has been engaging with through its own evolution and through the introduction of effectiveness-focused categories.
Other awards, including those purely focused on effectiveness, weight Impact differently by design. In those rooms, work can win on outcomes without being highly creative and that is right for what those awards measure. The industry needs both kinds of recognition. They are different lenses on the same question.
Do you believe winning a Cannes Lion is a reliable proxy for business or behavioral impact?
A Cannes Lion is a strong positive indicator. It is not a complete proxy.
Most Lion-winning work has earned its recognition. The case studies are built on campaigns that ran in market, with results that jurors examine and debate. Most winners reflect real work with real outcomes, and the festival has tightened its verification and entry rules in recent years specifically to protect that standard.
What is also true, and worth saying honestly, is that not every entry holds up equally well to scrutiny. Some case studies present results in maximum-impact language. A small number of high-profile entries in recent cycles have been stripped of awards after their numbers did not survive deeper review. This is not a Cannes-only issue. It happens across major awards. When a case study does not hold up, festivals strip the award and tighten the rules. That is the festival defending its own standard.
For a CMO, an agency leader, or anyone reading the trade press, the practical implication is straightforward. A Cannes Lion deserves respect. Treat it as a strong signal that the work cleared a serious bar. Stay critically engaged when you read any specific case study, because not every result claim is built the same way. Most are trustworthy. A few will not be. The reader’s job is to keep reading carefully.
Where do you personally draw the line between award-winning creativity and work that delivers real-world results?
I do not draw a line between the two, because the strongest work in our industry satisfies both at the same time. The line I draw, and the line I push for in jury rooms, is between work where the creative idea and the business outcome cannot be separated, and work where they can.
The question I ask in jury rooms when something looks beautiful is this: what would have happened if this work did not exist? If the answer is that the brand would have been in a measurably different place, the work is doing real work. If the answer is harder to give, creativity may be admirable, but the standard has not been fully cleared.
The work I respect most over the years has cleared that bar. The work that has stayed with me, that I have used as reference inside my own organization, is work where you cannot tell the story of the brand without telling the story of the campaign, and you cannot tell the story of the campaign without showing what it did. That work tends to win awards and deliver outcomes, because both are signals of the same underlying quality.
The risk I would warn against is treating creativity and effectiveness as opposites. They are not. Beautiful work that achieves nothing is not great creative work, it is decoration. Effective work that has no creative ambition is not great either, it is functional. The best work is both, and the best clients ask for both, and the best agencies deliver both. That is the standard worth pushing for.
Is there a risk that the industry is optimizing for awards rather than outcomes?
Yes. The pressure exists, and pretending it does not exist would be dishonest.
It would be unfair to say the industry is uniformly optimizing for awards. There is a great deal of serious, well-briefed, client-facing work being produced across this region and globally that is doing exactly what it is supposed to do: serving the brief, building brands, moving businesses. That work also wins awards, and it deserves to.
What is also true is that a portion of award entries each year, across all major festivals, are clearly shaped by award goals more than by client goals. Smaller projects produced on tighter budgets specifically with award categories in mind. Effectiveness narratives written backwards from the entry rather than forwards from the brief. This is not a Cannes-only issue. It is a known dynamic across major awards globally.
Clients have a role here that the industry has been slow to discuss honestly. Agencies will produce what their clients pay them to produce. If a brief prioritizes award worthiness above business outcomes, the work will be shaped by that. The best briefs in this region ask for both: creative ambition and business impact. The work that comes out of those briefs is the work that wins on both fronts. The structural pressure on the industry is downstream of the brief, and the brief is set by the client.
How should CMOs in the region interpret Cannes success when assessing agency performance or investment decisions?
A Cannes Lion tells a CMO that the agency can produce creatively ambitious work that holds up internationally. That is genuinely valuable. It is a signal of the agency’s craft, its strategic thinking, and its cultural ambition. CMOs should treat it as one of several positive indicators when assessing partners.
Where I would urge regional CMOs to be careful is about over-indexing on award counts when making investment decisions. The right question to put to an agency is not only “how many Lions have you won,” but “show me three pieces of work in the last three years where you can prove the business outcome.” If the agency answers both questions credibly, they are operating at the level the moment requires. If they pivot quickly to award reels and case study videos, they are selling the wrong thing.
For CMOs assessing their own marketing investment, the discipline is similar. Funding work because it might win awards is funding the agency’s portfolio, not the brand’s growth. CMOs in this region have more leverage in this conversation than they sometimes realize.
If you had to answer directly: is winning Lions translating into business results today?
Yes. Winning Lions translates into real business results for the agency that wins, and the industry should be straightforward about why.
A major Lion gets the agency on stage at Cannes. It puts them in global trade headlines. It positions the agency name in front of CMOs who are shortlisting for pitches in the months that follow. It attracts senior creative talent, because creatives want to work where the awards happen. It gives the agency moral capital with existing clients and a stronger position in new business. These are real, measurable commercial outcomes, and they happen reliably for serious winners. The credibility signal also has a half-life. It fades over time unless the agency keeps producing work at that level. Consistency matters.
So yes. Winning Lions still translates into business results for the agencies that win them, and that is part of why agencies invest in awards the way they do. We should not pretend otherwise.
