There’s a crisis of distinctiveness, brands need to build precdent over persuasion, and they also need to get customer savvy according to Warc’s latest set of insights from Cannes Lions 2024.
The findings are derived from Warc and Cannes Lions’ Creative Impact Stream, which featured 31 sessions across five days of this years festival and highlighted the role of creativity in building resilient brands that deliver commercial results.
“At Cannes Lions last year, Professor Scott Galloway claimed that “the era of brand is over”. We set out to prove him wrong. Our goal was to develop a 21st-century case for brand-building, with effectiveness at its heart,” said Warc chief content and customer officer David Tiltman.
“What we found was that the power of a strong brand endures – and that is as true for emerging tech companies as it is for legacy consumer goods companies.”
How to build a brand in the 21st century
Key takeaways this year included that digital native firms are brand building, moreover brands can act as platforms or intermediaries for dual audiences.
In addition, brands should look to create more clarity on the definition of brand and say that marketers can argue for brand building based on precedent rather than persuasion.
A crisis of distinctiveness
Increasingly things are starting to look the same, with a study from IPSOS and Jones Knowles Ritchie highlighting that 65% of them have weak to no associations with the brands that pay for them.
Moreover, the rise of short-attention media formats is making it harder to stand out, as 85% of ads do not meet the attention memory threshold of 2.5 seconds. Anything below that threshold will not drive salience and is essentially wasted spend.
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There’s a retail media boom
Warc suggests retail media will grow from 13.7% to £121 billion ($153.3 billion).
Retail media has also attracted growing attention from brands eager to connect with shoppers near the point of purchase, with a growing presence in Cannes this year of “commerce media” owners.
