The Case for Creativity & Cannes Lions - James Hurman
Following my article in Campaign doubting the effectiveness of Cannes Lions ads, creativity and innovation expert, James Hurman, criticised the System1 data in an article of his own. Instead of turning this into a fully fledged LinkedIn spat, I've brought him on to the Uncensored CMO podcast to discuss our disagreement.
Here's the articles before you listen:
Part 1 – The Case for Creativity in Business
- Growing up in a world that didn’t recognise the potential of creativity
- How Apple ‘Crazy Ones’ Ad inspired James to pursue Advertising
- James’ mission to prove the value of Creativity
- Why Jon was supposed to have a career as an Actuary
- What the research tells us about the role of Creativity on your success
- Why we should define effectiveness in hard commercial terms
- Establishing a universal definition with the Creative Effectiveness Ladder
- Why understanding your commercial contribution will get you promoted
- Why the CMO needs to match the certainty and measurability of their Exec colleagues
- How to sell a Gorilla playing drums to your business
- We overestimate what we can achieve in 1 year and underestimate what we can achieve in 10
- The surprising impact on light buyers even on large brands
- Very few people are buying right now so you must focus on creating future demand
- The seduction of short term performance metrics
- How the failure rate of start-ups warn us about the danger of rely on short term metrics only
- Why it takes an average of 7 years to have an ‘over-night success’
- The importance of using familiarity when launching a new innovation
- Why you shouldn’t ditch the old creative if its good
Part 2 – The Controversy over Cannes
- How little time CMO’s actually spend on Advertising
- Jon shares the story before his Effie and Cannes Lion wins
- How Jon created the name for Uncensored CMO on the beach at Cannes
- System1 puts Cannes Lion winners to the test
- Why James reacted so strongly to my Campaign article
- The importance of recognising the power of Creativity in Advertising
- How the emotion being created by Cannes winners has changed
- The case for picking a side and standing up for your values
- Effectiveness awards look back whilst Creative awards look forward
- What the Nike winners tell us about Juries decision making
- Aldi Kevin the Carrot and the power of consistency
- Whether we can judge creative on a first impression only
- The importance of authenticity when it comes to purpose
- Wisdom of Crowds and how a Nat Rep samples can be a good guide to effectiveness
- The power of Excess Creative Share of Voice in addition to standard ESOV
- How the opinion of others impacts on our opinion of a brand
- The history of Essity’s Bodyform campaign and how agency & client worked together
- Peter Field’s Crisis in Creativity and how we have seen a significant shift to short termism
- What the role of Creative Awards should be
- Why we all need to work towards a longer term view and apply creativity to the health of our business
