Cannes Lions Review 2017

First and foremost, Cannes is an awards show.

This year, entrants (mostly agencies) paid an estimated $72 million to submit 41,170 entries in 24 categories and 1805 prizes were awarded. The most important are the ‘Grand Prix,’ with 28 awarded this year. So who won.. and what does it tell us?

The most striking fact is that 57% of the top prizes – 16 out of 28 – went to a single country with just 4.4% of the world’s population: the USA. No other country won more than 2 Grand Prix.

For a global festival, where every country should be represented, there is clearly something odd here. Have the majority of the world’s best creatives moved to the US? or is Cannes no longer attracting the diversity of participants it used to attract? We’ll return to this theme later. But for now, let’s look at the positives.

The biggest winner, with four Grand Prix, was the statue on Wall Street - the “Fearless Girl,” facing up to the iconic Wall Street Bull. The agency was McCann New York and their client was State Street. A simple but brilliant image of the gender equality which Wall Street lacks and State Street has committed to improving. A “big idea,” proving that such a thing still exists – a commercial objective achieved through an expression of corporate purpose and social responsibility.

Read Julian Boulding's full review below.