What does award-winning B2B advertising and marketing appear like?
For the primary time for the reason that prestigious Cannes Lions Worldwide Pageant of Creativity started within the Fifties, the recently-held 2022 occasion noticed devoted B2B-specific advertising and marketing 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 along with the B2B neighborhood — most notably The B2B Institute — the trade suppose tank funded by LinkedIn* that researches the way forward for B2B advertising and marketing 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 appear 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 big selection of 11 companies and merchandise classes:
- Cross-channel Storytelling
- Model Expertise
- Modern use of Broadcast & Content material
- Concentrating on & Engagement
- Effectiveness & Measurement
- Lengthy-Time period Model Constructing
- Breakthrough on a Funds
- Challenger Model
- Company Function & Social Accountability
- Market Disruption
- Craft in B2B
The B2B model expertise and focusing on and engagement award winner was Spotify, for its “A Music For Each CMO” entry, which obtained 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 employees from work to residence, and augmented by a sequence of 15-second social media adverts, the marketing campaign obtained greater than 30 million views in its first month, together with a 353 p.c enhance in web site visitors.
A whole listing of those and the entire different large winners on the first-ever Artistic B2B Lions is offered 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 and marketing classes at Cannes for the primary time was a serious alternative for B2B manufacturers and entrepreneurs to showcase promoting campaigns in a method that hasn’t been doable till now, and 2023 is more likely to see a larger number of entrants from the quickly altering faces of extra conventional B2B corporations.
The pandemic has definitely sparked upheaval within the B2B advertising and marketing house, whether or not it’s the shift to digital-first efforts, always-on campaigns, or — because the B2B Institute not too long ago 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 not too long ago took a deep dive take a look at this explicit B2B advertising and marketing 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 subsequent twenty years can be in regards to the ‘Creatification’ of a brand new era of tech companies,” Roslansky noticed.
“The subsequent twenty years can be in regards to 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, not too long ago instructed in “What We Discovered In regards to the Advert Trade After a Week at Cannes Lions”, occurring to notice that, “B2B entrepreneurs are doing Tremendous Bowl spots and hiring Matthew McConaughey as a spokesperson.”
3 — Better B2B Model Consciousness Alternatives
The primary Artistic B2B Lions occasion and awards introduced the type of world stage for B2B efforts and all-star alternatives for in-person networking and trade studying that may hopefully proceed to develop for years to return, 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 and marketing will take a while to unpack, as advertising and marketing professionals mull over their prime take-aways from the week.
Change is eternally part of advertising and marketing, 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 totally 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 trade shifts which can be within the works, and that these insights can assist you propel and elevate your personal B2B advertising and marketing efforts.
To study 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 and marketing that elevates, provides voice to expertise, and humanizes with authenticity takes appreciable effort and time, which is why an growing variety of corporations are selecting to work with a prime digital advertising and marketing company akin to TopRank Advertising and marketing. Contact us to learn the way we can assist, as we’ve carried out 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.
