Tag Archives: creative

water reverberation

Cannes Lions Responds to Award Manipulation With New Rules

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Anyone who’s ever entered creative work into an award show has at some point witnessed questionable submissions and practices.

The 2025 Cannes Lions awards were apparently no exception.

According to Adweek, “Cannes Lions is introducing new global integrity standards following a wave of scrutiny over manipulated case studies and unverifiable claims that cast a shadow over the 2025 festival.”

With the prevalence of AI usage, some agencies have submitted and even aired client-approved work containing AI-manipulated images.

There are also ongoing discussions about the accuracy of reported case study results.

Case study details are usually subject to client confidentiality agreements, competitive secrecy, and review by clients and its legal teams. However, this process does not always occur.

The new 2026 Cannes Lions rules are built around 5 pillars that include veracity of claims, consequences for misrepresentation, and publishing of an annual integrity audit report.

Additionally, Cannes Lions plans to publish an AI Integrity Handbook based on guidelines from the OECD and UNESCO.

 

 

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women make purchase decisions

Old Voiceover Stereotypes In Marketing Still Prevail. Why?

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Research shows that female voiceovers are more generally effective when targeting women

Each year marketers spend millions on carefully crafted creative for each media channel in hopes of emotionally connecting with consumers, yet stereotypes still prevail when it comes to talent. Many articles have been written about hiring more female directors through the Free the Bid campaign, but little attention has been given to talent selection – particularly voiceovers.

In our previous client-side jobs and even today as we advise clients, there is still a prevalent belief that male voiceover talent is more effective than female VO’s. And that’s simply not true.

Research then, and still today, shows that male and female voiceover talent are equally effective. However, there can be engagement differences depending upon the product and the core audience as revealed in an article published last November in Media Village.

Author Pierre Bouvard writes, “Marketers spend millions on establishing their brands and want to know what’s driving campaign return-on-investment (ROI).  That’s where third-party companies like Nielsen come in – to connect the dots with data. In an ROI study of 500 advertising campaigns, Nielsen looked at which elements contribute to sales on all major media platforms.  By a huge margin, creative was the strongest sales driver.  It was responsible for nearly 50% of all sales lift…Women in fact prefer female voiceovers in AM/FM radio ads.”

Mr. Bouvard’s article has great data points and graphs from Nielsen that reveal just how more effective female voiceovers can be when targeting women – so give it a read.

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