What you need to know:

• Three B2B experts sat down to dissect three of the finalists for the Creative B2B Cannes Lion award – including the winner, SherwinWilliams’ Speaking in Color.
• Rob Omodiagbe, one of the Cannes jury members, joined Brand Traction’s Jon Bradshaw and The B2B Institute’s Tiya Lee at LinkedIn’s B2B Next Summit in Sydney.
• Creativity shone, but two of the three examples lacked scale or commercial cut-through, panellists said. Still, as Omodiagbe noted: “At Cannes, creativity is king.”

A voice-controlled colour palette from paint company Sherwin-Williams, an Uber rival called Husk that cut journeys for special needs children in Belgium, and a New Zealand celebrity’s Yellow e-commerce website selling undies topped the global B2B creativity stakes at the Cannes Lions. It was the first B2B category at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, but the judges weren’t unanimous in their decision – the balance between creativity and moving the commercial needle split the decision.

Rob Omodiagbe, Executive Creative Director APAC at Just Global – and Creative B2B Lions jury member, joined Brand Traction founder Jon Bradshaw and Tiya Lee, Partnership Lead at LinkedIn’s The B2B Institute, to break down the Grand Prix and two other finalists.

B2B marketing is like classical music, Lee said. It’s perceived as “old fashioned, stodgy, boring”. Having a dedicated Lion was like Beyonce releasing an album sampling classical music – it has attracted new people to the genre. But none of the finalists came from B2B-specific agencies, Omodiagbe said, which disappointed him a little.

Sherwin-Williams: Speaking in Color

Speaking in Color aimed at architects, using a voice-activated artificial intelligence system to produce hues of colour. Saying ‘crystal clear, Caribbean water’, for example, yields shades of blue. It won the Grand Prix.

“What's great is it personalises colour in a way that has the possibility to turn, I guess, a B2B brief into a B2B to C phenomenon,” Omodiagbe said.

“Whilst this isn't a consumer application, everyone could see how it could easily become one … I think Grand Prix winners are meant to cause debate, which it probably will, but I think it also is meant to at some level at least, redefine a category. I think that's what this project did.” Eight out of the 10 jury members ranked Speaking in Color first, with two dissenting who put it second, he added.

Bradshaw agreed. Choosing the colour, he said, can be the hardest part. Plus “it’s cool. It’s got AI in it. It’s got tech in it,” he said. But, Bradshaw noted, it hits only the highly engaged audience – architects, and ignores the occasional shoppers. “The bit that really shits me about these things is that it's advertising that requires advertising to get you to see the advertising,” he said. “The app existing on the website or existing in the store will get nobody to it unless I then find advertising.”

Lee, meanwhile, noted it connects memories to colour in an emotion-filled way. “It’s able to evoke emotion very quickly,” she said.

D’ieteren’s Husk: Reduce the Ride

Auto distributor D’ieteren acquired a transport service, Husk, back in 2019, and sought to launch it into the Belgian market. It would be competing with the likes of Uber and Lyft. The challenge was, how did the company enter a competitive market on a small budget? “By solving Belgium’s most shameful mobility problem”, the brand said. More than 5,000 special needs children spent four to six hours a day on the bus to and from school. The campaign landed Husk a government contract to transport the children.

“This was probably one of my favourite pieces of work,” Omodiagbe said. “I love the ambition… What I mean by that is that it's B2B creativity that solves a business problem, not a creative one. And they did that through turning the brand into a story maker as opposed to a storyteller.”

Bradshaw, again, said he liked the idea. It grew an industry and sat at the heart of the “brand purpose, green washing, social washing, whole shit going on at Cannes – this isn’t that,” he added.

“My issue with it as an example… is scale. It's 5,000 people's lives have been changed dramatically and we should celebrate that. But I can't take it into my client and go, and this is why you should be using more creativity or advertising, because it hasn't got the impact that I need to help me do the job that we're talking about.” Lee agreed, saying it was “a little bit too targeted” despite being heartwarmingly emotional and connecting with the audience.

But Cannes is about creativity, not just results, Omodiagbe replied. “I'd argue that there are a number of more pragmatic award shows out there and the best of the work that wins there is maybe more useful to help you sell your prospective client on the value of good work,” he said.

Yellow: Robyn’s Undies

Yellow, formerly the company behind the Yellow Pages in New Zealand, built a website to sell its digital skills to small businesses. So it chose a Kiwi actress, Robyn Malcolm, who once played a character who made and sold “outrageous undies” – and built her a business selling undies in real life.

“This was the closest to business outcomes of the three that we got,” Lee said. “And I think that piece was just missing from the other two.”

Omodiagbe said while not a groundbreaking idea, it was a good product demo.

“The thing that sets it apart is that they actually got the thing made,” he said. “Lots of creatives have probably come up with ideas similar to this, but it's so hard to make that – and they did it.”

Bradshaw liked this idea better than others because, well, it “works its nuts off”. “I mean, geez, we're laughing at advertising case studies. That's a great result,” he said. “So I think it’s great.”

At Cannes, creativity is king, Omodiagbe said. He remembers having two questions inside agencies as an award entrant: “One, how the hell did they get that budget? And two, how did they get that idea past the client?” he said.

As a first year for B2B entries at Cannes, Omodiagbe said he hopes the jury set a benchmark. “We were asked to set the creative standard for effective B2B. And given that the first year, that may or may not have been wholly successful,” he said. “But I think given the work that we looked at, that's what we attempted to do.”