Albert Einstein once said that “creativity is seeing what others see and thinking what no one else ever thought.” Several works celebrated at Cannes this year leveraged existing media that we are used to seeing in a certain light and repurposed them to create brand awareness through irony and shock value. An example of this is NotMilk’s ‘We Didn’t Write This Campaign’, which was awarded a Gold in the Print & Publishing category. The company was being sued by big dairy industry lawyers, who inadvertently provided brilliant copy that perfectly embodied the company’s value proposition. AB In Bev’s ‘The Artois Probability’ highlighted the historical legacy of Stella Artois, a beer in production since 1366, by analyzing the color and recipient shape in several European paintings featuring beer, taking into account the year in which each painting was made and the artists’ distance from Stella Artois’ Belgian brewery to determine the level of probability that the beverage depicted in each masterwork was indeed Stella Artois.

We tend to think about repurposed media in terms of taking the old and layering the new on top of it, but truly astonishing results can be achieved inverting the factors as seen in Activision Blizzard and Dentsu Creative Taiwan’s ‘The Taiwanese World of Warcraft’, an adaptation of the most talked-about story among Warcraft players—Wrath of the Lich King – in the 400 years old Taiwanese puppetry tradition, which was awarded a Bronze in the Entertainment Lions for Gaming category.

Sound can transport us to a different place, open us up to experiences that are outside of our reach otherwise, and build an emotional bridge that encourages acceptance. This year, Cannes Lions rewarded work that truly pushed the boundaries of what sound can do: the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s ‘The Most Beautiful Sound’ captured the sound of a cancer cell dying, playing it for patients in treatment to give them a sensorial experience of their progress. Michelob Ultra’s Dreamcaster, awarded a Grand Prix in the Entertainment Lions for Sports category and a Silver Lion in the Radio & Audio category, leveraged spatial audio and a purpose-developed new haptic language, as well as AI-powered refreshable braille to empower a blind person to commentate a live NBA game on prime-time television. Sound and music are also a powerful force in creating connections and engendering allyship.

A dentsu Beach House session titled ‘Pride Was Always a Protest’, featuring industry thought leaders from GLAAD, NBC Universal, Meta and dentsu reflected on the step back in LGBTQIA+ rights in several countries, the rise in hate crimes towards this community in countries like the UK, and the recent backlash that caused some brands from pulling back their Pride initiatives. The session pointed to P&G and iHeart Media’s ‘Can’t Cancel Pride’ on-demand concert as one of the most remarkable and successful campaigns out there recognizing, celebrating, and supporting LGBTQIA+ rights and to dentsu’s very own ‘More Than That’ podcast, built from the ground up in partnerships with brands and diversity-owned producers and distributors to address the inequities in the media and advertising supply chain.