Cannes Lions reviews client-agency ‘communication breakdown’ in 2024

“Communication Breakdown” is the marginally alarming title given to Cannes Lions’ annual “State of Creativity” survey, which this 12 months exposes the dearth of communication between shoppers and businesses.

No shock that it’s the manufacturers who paint a extra constructive image, whereas businesses endure in silence – afraid to inform shoppers that they discover it laborious to work with them. The pressure persists regardless of expectations of enterprise development and elevated advertising budgets, in line with Cannes’ evaluation of almost 3000 world responses (and a few 1:1 conversations with business leaders).

Model-side, junior entrepreneurs additionally expressed frustration with the outdated guard of senior management. Due to an absence of inventive entrepreneurs at boardroom stage, there’s much less scope to steer execs to push boundaries with the inventive work.

As you may count on from Cannes Lions, there’s loads of proof that investing in creativity makes good enterprise sense. Manufacturers predicting greater development for 2024 are 6x extra more likely to prioritise creativity, 4.6x extra more likely to have the next advertising spend than 2023, and so they put extra funding into long run model constructing.

Spencer Fox, SVP, enterprise lead, advisory, Lions says: “What we’re seeing is that though the sentiment is outwardly optimistic, inwardly the business is at odds. There’s optimism round progress and funding, however tensions that must be labored by way of if we’re going to grasp the potential of creativity as a development driver. Basically, there’s a communication breakdown.”