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It is the 64th Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this year. This eight-day (June 17-24) exhibition includes Cannes Lions, Lions Health, Lions Innovation, and Lions Entertainment. A total of hundreds of seminars, exhibitions, workshops inside and outside the exhibition attracted more than 15,000 advertisers, agencies, and technology companies to participate in this festival. The Cannes Lions has new ideas every year and added “Tour of the Work” this year; winning and shortlisted works were explained and presented by judges. Also, Podcast for the Cannes Lions added “Ask out Loud”; creative people and experts were invited to make comments against various subjects in the form of forums on site.
Several conclusions can be drawn from award-winning works and workshops:

1. Advertising marketing has been committed to gender equality and humanitarian care.
2. Creativity is still above technology.
3. Data gives creativity bonus points; particular attention should be paid to human nature contained in data.
4. Hacker marketing presents alternative, successful marketing practices.
5. AI is a new doctrine.
6. Going cross-boundary cooperation may seek the best ideas and break slios.

Case illustrations for each conclusion are as follows:
1.Advertising marketing has been committed to gender equality and humanitarian care to make a better world.
Fearless Girl https://vimeo.com/223766732
Attracting worldwide media and public attention, Fearless Girl, a bronze statue of a little girl, has stood in front of the Charging Bull, the famous bronze bull, on Wall Street in New York City since the day before the International Women’s Day this year. The Fearless Girl was created by State Street Global Advisors (SSGA) to promote the power of women’s leadership and to emphasize that corporate financial performance is to be better if women are in high-level positions. Fearless Girl was initially to be placed until Apr. 2nd according to the application and is now able to be placed until Feb. next year with the Mayor’s permission. This work won 18 awards at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, which includes 4 annual awards: Titanium, Outdoor, PR, and Glass Lion. Judges said that although the work is simple and quiet, the message it conveys is very powerful, timely and permanent.

Humanium Metal http://humanium-metal.com/
Humanium Metal, the largest prize winning work for the Innovation award of the year, aims at solving the problem of gun violence, poverty, and illegal firearms. The problem of illegal guns is particularly serious in developing countries. The creative team from Sweden has worked with a number of government authorities to collect and destroy illegal weapons in a legal manner and then has made the “Humanium Metal” that the manufacturing industry will need to use. All Humanium Metal production is guided by principles as formulated by the World Fair Trade Organisation, and such metal is provided to be purchased and made into all sorts of products so that this metal itself becomes a commercial trade system and platform and constructs as a social enterprise. Humanium Metal not only generates job opportunities and local income, but also contributes to the proceeds from product sales to be used to rebuild conflict-torn areas, which has positive effects on the local economy.

2. Creativity is still above technology.
New ideas have been constantly brought forth for technology, but what draws judges’ attention is still creativity instead of the work that has cool technology but is uncreative.

Ikea：Cook this Page https://youtu.be/cY8IonGMrYc
New ingredients and recipes will make people feel fearful. IKEA Toronto rethinks the way to use recipes by launching the event “Cook This Page” poster for the IKEA kitchen marketing campaign. The poster is made of paper that can be baked. As long as ingredients are placed on the designated location on the poster and placed into baking equipment, the simple and delicious cuisine is finished.

Cheetos Museum https://www.cheetosmuseum.com/
How to make people feel new and interesting for the snacks they often eat inattentively? Cheetos has irregular shapes so its company invited the public to upload and name the most interesting Cheetos. It is surprised that Cheetos received more than 120,000 entries. In addition to online art galleries and shops, and a series of introduction films, Cheetos held a physical exhibition at the Central Station in New York. Cheetos not only clocked the highest ever sales, but also won gold at Cannes Lions.

3. Data gives creativity bonus points; particular attention should be paid to human nature contained in data.
Transport Accident Commission (TAC) in Victoria, Australia: Meet GrahamOfficial website: http://www.meetgraham.com.au/ What kind of body can survive a car crash? On the basis of decades of data on road safety and surgical trauma medical researches, TAC invited an artist to make Graham, the perfect person, to answer this question and exhibited it at a gallery so that the public can interact with Graham through AR to understand its special body structure. If ordinary people do not have such a body structure, they still need to pay attention to traffic safety.

Whirlpool: Care Counts https://youtu.be/oxbipSM8GmA
Dropout will affect school children’s future development, making them disadvantaged. Whirlpool, the major U.S.-based home appliance manufacturer, found that tens of thousands of kids miss school every day because they lack clean clothes, and clothing affect appearance and self-confidence, hence Whirlpool developed the Care Counts™ program. It has installed washers and dryers at schools and chose students who were often absent from school in the past to participate in this program, and it is finally proved that it’s just because clothes are washed; the attendance rate for the 93% of the students who have clean clothes is higher. And this program is going to expand to more schools.

4. Hacker marketing presents alternative, successful marketing practices.
Burger King: Google Home of the Whopper https://youtu.be/e2yYeTlAl5I
Advertisers are always trying to reach out to consumers as much as possible, and creative people are also thinking about how to break through the existing media and come into contact with the ever-changing consumers, hence it becomes a new marketing attempt to hack into the existing platforms or systems. Smart Voice Assistant is a very popular product in recent years. Although there is no official push ad yet, Burger King let Google Home advertise for itself in a clever way. Despite the controversies, the topic raised, coupled with media pushing the wave and adding to the billows, garnered a great deal of publicity and won the annual award Direct Marketing at the Cannes Lions for Burger King.

5. AI is a new doctrine.
This year’s workshops on hot topics in AI, machine learning, and Chatbots talk about future development and the potential impact of machines in our lives and industries. humans and machines can cooperate with each other. We can assign machines more repetitive tasks, but creativity is still one of the qualities that human beings are superior to machines.
Some of great examples this year are the use of AI to help people lead a better life, including Ada, the personal health companion: (https://ada.com/)(https://youtu.be/XsCvP-lTnJI), iTBra that can help you exam breast cancer without pain at any time (http://cyrcadiahealth.com/), Baidu’s glasses that help Alzheimer’s sufferers to lead a smooth life (https://youtu.be/WWc2FsvA7qM), and Chatbot that developed by Italia Longeva (https://youtu.be/WMTBzX-EZ7g).

6. Going cross-boundary cooperation may seek the best ideas and break slios
A variety of cross-field collaboration will stimulate better creativity. Cooperation among brand and music creators, artists, and directors has been a long time, but more possibilities are also increasing. Just throw yourself away and the whole team has a common belief and then everyone will have great ideas in the process of executing a project.

Judges this year also constantly remind the creative people that wonderful works must be brave, take risk, and push the boundaries.