More About Advertising reported Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity dumped the Holding Company of the Year/Creative Company of the Year trophy.
In nixing the dubious honor, Cannes Liars finally admitted it represented a scam award—a recognition exclusively reserved for White holding companies.
Plus, the Omnicom acquisition of IPG—along with WPP repositioning itself as a single White operating company—further complicated the exclusivity and scammy nature.
Given all the holding/operating companies are becoming media-first or AI-focused enterprises, it didn’t even make sense to call it the Creative Company of the Year award.
Expect Cannes to recoup any losses and maintain its outrageous profits by introducing new trophy categories.
The only true creativity with Cannes Lions involves its craftiness for maximizing and monetizing opportunities targeting an ever-award-hungry Adland.
Cannes cans Creative Company of the Year
By Stephen Foster
Cannes Lions has moved to update one of the dafter elements of its annual jamboree, “retiring” (a newly-popular word in adland as elsewhere) its Creative Company of the Year award. This simply seems to have rewarded the ad holding company that made the most shortlists — that is, had the most entries — last year going to WPP.
Which looked rather odd because just as then CEO Mark Read and the troops were celebrating this on stage it must have been evident to even the most rosé-soaked client that the wheels were coming off the British-owned holding company in all directions.
With Omnicom buying IPG the number of contenders has reduced anyway (Publicis, which ditched Cannes entries entirely one year to save a reported €50m) doesn’t seem to take the event as seriously as its US and UK rivals.
In line with this are changes to Network of the Year, presumably now a replacement for Creative Company of the Year. This too has had its issues, Omnicom’s DDB winning last year even though it had to withdraw three ads for cheating. DDB has now joined the list of retirees — folded into TBWA — suggesting the connection between supposed creative excellence and commercial performance isn’t as direct as many (including the Cannes organisers) suggest.
Cannes Lions says: “By introducing a cap on shortlist contribution, reinforcing the importance of quality over quantity through adjusted weighting, and ensuring consistent judging practices, our aim is to provide a refreshed benchmark that reflects today’s creative landscape — grounded in credibility, integrity and excellence.”
That would be nice.
