Cannes Lions launches new award for creative B2B excellence

A new award aimed at celebrating the best B2B advertising will be up for grabs at the 2022 Cannes Lion festival.

The new Creative B2B Lion will be given to campaigns that display both creativity and effectiveness in advertising products and services that are purchased by professionals on behalf of businesses.

Following an increase in the number of Cannes Lions awards going to B2B work, the festival organisers said now was the right time to introduce the new accolade, which has been in discussion since 2013.

Philip Thomas, chairman of Lions, said: “Having seen a rise in B2B work winning across the Lions, and with many in the industry believing that a specialist Lion in this area will raise the creative bar and elevate the discipline, we think that now is B2B’s moment to have its own spotlight on the global creative stage.” 

Meanwhile, the awards-giving body has developed its Creative eCommerce Lion to recognise both online and offline commerce, payment solutions and transactions.

The new Creative Commerce Lion category is broader than the previous version, reflecting a shift in the number of commerce-related entries.

Simon Cook, managing director at Lions, said: “We’ve broadened this Lion to reflect the different emerging areas of commerce. 

“There was a noticeable shift across the work this year – commerce-related entries were up 18%, and our juries identified emerging trends around ‘distributed commerce’, ‘equitable commerce’, and the proliferation of commerce more generally. Evolving the Commerce Lion is about keeping it relevant and in-line with a rapidly shifting landscape.” 

An update to the Media Lion, meanwhile, will clarify that winners will be awarded for creative ideas. 

Susie Walker, vice-president of awards and insight, Lions, said: “We've added an explicit reference to media in the description of the overall Lion to make it clear that we are rewarding creative media ideas, and changes like altering the weighting structure that we give to the jury so that the majority of the weighting sits across the media craft areas, as well as updates throughout the categories reinforce the really clear focus of celebrating media ideas and creativity.” 

More than 400 global experts will judge this year’s awards, which will be handed out at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity from 20 to 24 June.