Award-Winning Strategy for Completed Advertising Cases: Cannes Lions Example

This research paper is dedicated to the creation of the strategy (algorithm) of victory at the Cannes Lions festival for the already-completed advertising product. The relevance of this topic lies in the comparatively small number of creative advertising works realized on the Russian market that can compete with the creativity of works from other countries, due to the features of the Russian advertising market. That is why there is a strong requirement to find supplementary ways, in addition to creative ideas, to promote cases of Russian participants to win at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Moreover, winning this festival has many advantages for an advertising agency, the main of which is attracting new clients. The object of the research is the process of judging at the festival, in particular, the factors affecting the evaluation of the work by the jury members. During the study, 7 expert interviews and a case-study of 2 works-winners of the Cannes Lions festival in the most popular nominations among participants from Russia were conducted. As a result of the study, a strategy (algorithm) for winning the festival for a complete advertising product was formed. This strategy is based on a set of tools that influence the factors which affect the evaluation of work by jury members. This strategy is general toward practice, as it is aimed at promoting the "presentation" of the case and does not depend on its contents. However, the success of the results of its application has a limitation which lies in the influence of the factor “quality of the idea and its implementation” on the evaluation of the case by the jury members of the festival.