This document discusses trends in transformational storytelling seen at Cannes Lions in 2019. It covers several trends including: 1. Multisensory storytelling and using all senses to engage consumers through unexpected means. 2. The power of social conscience and using storytelling and media dollars to promote equality and social issues. 3. Inclusiveness and ensuring everybody is represented in stories through more empathetic and accessible storytelling. 4. The importance of truth in storytelling as consumers demand authenticity from brands, governments and media. 5. Creating immersive experiences for consumers to interact with brands through world building and bucket list experiences.

1. TRANSFORMATIONAL
STORYTELLING
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2. Introduction
Overview of Insights
Takeaways
Trends
Gather ’Round the Fire
• A Sense for Storytelling
• Tools for the Tale
• Multisensory Storytelling
• The Power of Social Conscience
• Everybody In
• The Importance of Truth
• Experience Wins
• Revisiting Our Craft
• Lead with Empathy
• Evolve the Narrative
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3. Gather
’Round the Fire
Storytelling has been our method of teaching,
persuading, and communicating since man’s
earliest days. Our brains are hardwired to
respond to storytelling, an ageless technique
tied to connection, information retention, and
social loyalty.
Modern storytelling takes many forms, from
peer to peer, influencer to listener, and leader to
tribe. As brands transform storytelling, both
through the medium of new technologies and
the message we experience, we find new ways
to connect, persuade, and drive human
emotion.
Transformational Stor ytelling
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4. A Sense
for Storytelling
Capitalize on low hanging fruit
to identify a ballpark
Some of us are visual learners. In fact, we scroll through
nearly 300 feet of content—the size of a football pitch—to
learn what our communities are up to each day. We absorb
visual storytelling, stopping our thumbs and widening our
eyes at anything that piques our interest—from something
that makes us smile, turns our heads, or instigates our fear
of missing out.
Others learn in different ways. We listen to voices intently,
highly focused on absorbing information. Instead of binge-
watching, we binge-listen.
We are tactile, needing to touch and interact to truly
absorb an experience. Others need to be fully immersed in
sights, sounds, and even smells of an experience to fully
absorb the message.
At Cannes this week, one thing was certain;
brands are relentlessly pursuing ways to make
sure their message is absorbed.
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5. Tools for
the Tale
Capitalize on low hanging fruit
to identify a ballpark
Campaigns don’t just come in cuts anymore. They’re
vertical. Horizontal. Ephemeral or permanent. Long or
short form. Voice-told or voice-activated. Tactile or
haptic. Real or virtual. Told one-to-one or one-to-one
million.
You can scratch, sniff, snap, or swipe.
There is more content than can ever be consumed and
more choices for ways to consume it. As brands try to
predict how long they can hold your attention while you
hold your phone, others are designing for what you do
when you put your phone down.
The one thing they all have in common? Delivering on
experiences that drive emotion.
So, it begs the question: Regardless of form or function,
what makes good storytelling?
The story must start with a purpose, a brand
perspective. A way to entertain me, to teach me, to tell
me something I don’t know.
It needs to know about me. How I will react. Will I cry?
Laugh? Roll my eyes and move on? Does my heart rate
increase? Does an experience make me feel differently
when I leave?
It needs to excite me! To stimulate me wherever it finds
me. Stories need to be delivered directly to me via
technology that makes sense, in the format that best
conveys the tale.
This week in Cannes, we took a look at the new tools,
technologies, and formats changing the art of
storytelling, ushering us past the mobile and streaming
era—welcome to content anywhere! Where your brand
IP is the next best thing you’ve seen (or heard, or felt)
all day.
Most of us think of
ourselves as thinking
creatures that feel, but
we are actually feeling
creatures
that think
—Jill Taylor, neuroanatomist, as quoted
during Google VP Ivy Ross’s Tuesday
keynote on ‘Design Feeling.’
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6. Transformational Stor ytelling
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The brands that win the
competition for
attention will consider
fresh ways of conveying
their story through
unexpected means that
consider all the senses
and lean heavily into
human intuition.
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Trends
Multisensory
Storytelling
The industry finds itself in
the unique position to push
the fight for equality and
the end of bias forward by
using media dollars to tell
pesonalised stories and
create experiences that do
actual good for the world.
The Power of Social
Conscience
It’s no longer acceptable to
overlook those among us
who are uniquely abled,
especially when there is
such importance put on
diversity and inclusion.
Everybody In
The global trust crisis has
spurred an outcry for the
truth from governments,
media, and brands.
It’s table stakes for creating
lasting relationships with
consumers.
The Importance
of Truth
Brands can create bucket-list
experiences and worlds in
which loyalists can lose
themselves when they
literally put consumers in
our stories.
Experience Wins
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7. 01
Multisensory
Storytelling
If you’re trying to predict the future of storytelling,
imagining how they might be told on screens today
won’t give you the full picture.
Good stories play out wherever consumers
find or create them. According to Gartner, the Internet
of Things will reach a predicted 25 billion connected
devices next year. While astounding, that figure
doesn’t capture the storytelling off-device and in
person.
The brands that win the competition for attention will
consider fresh ways of conveying their story
through unexpected means intended for all the senses
and leaning heavily into human intuition.
Visuals aren’t the only frontier. The multi-sensor trend
is well on its way with the rise in popularity
of podcasts, which command attention and
build loyalty, trust, and community around a
specialised topic.
Borrowing the format, brands have a chance
to connect with consumers in more meaningful ways,
at more personal levels, with a low
barrier of effort. The catch? Brands must take
part in authentic stories that put people
before their products.
Multisensory storytelling can take a consumer
on a journey in a literal second. Visa and Mastercard
are exploring how to convey the story of purchase in
the time it takes to process your payment, through
sonic branding, haptics, and animation that tell the
story of optimism, progress, and completion.
Google’s design department has set out to solve,
‘how it feels to hold Google in your hand,’ as they
approach product development with neuroaesthetics
in mind—understanding how an experience affects an
individual’s physiology on a nuanced level—to create
products that are both seamless within environments,
yet impactful when interfaced.
New mediums and sensibilities
shape our approach to brand
stories and experience
Neuroaesthetics makes us think about the tactility
of product. We have agency over products that we
surround ourselves with that can make our bodies
feel better. As a society, we should look for things
that help us feel better.
—Ivy Ross, VP of Design, Products & Services, Google, discussing how new, nuanced
biometrics can help brands build better experiences.
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8. The Power
of Social
Conscience
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Dream Crazy garnered tens of millions of views
on YouTube—71% in its first week live. The
campaign generated an 82% year-over-year
sales lift, according to Edison Trends.
29.5 million views
Nike’s Dream Crazy (above) collected 2 Grand Prix, a Titanium, 5 Gold, 3
Silver, and 2 Bronze Lions. The wins spanned categories, from Film to
Diversity & Inclusion in Sport to Excellence in Brand Storytelling.
Global consumers increasingly expect transparency in
brands’ advocacy or perspective on social issues before
considering a purchase. P&G Chief Brand Officer, Marc
Pritchard, considers it an, ‘obligation
as an industry to use our voice and advertising
for good.’ It’s an expanded view of brand purpose
or activism that drives this storytelling trend; at its core,
it’s using value imperatives as functional
drivers for creative concepts.
The trend has built steam recently, markedly with 2017’s
Fearless Girl for State Street Global Advisors and last
year’s The Talk from P&G. This year Nike’s Dream Crazy
took home 13 of Cannes Lions’ top honours across
categories, celebrating steadfast
personal conviction and the sacrifice required
for something you believe in. Nike wasn’t just
communicating its values as a brand to celebrate
athletes; it needs this advocacy to authentically
celebrate the adversity, sacrifice, and hard
work featured athletes endure to rise to the
top of their game.
You can see this clearly in the Grand Prix-awarded
work of The Female Company this year. German
feminine hygiene products are taxed far more than
‘daily necessities.’ The Female Company outsmarted
the code, packaging organic tampons within a
book—The Tampon Book: A Book Against
Discrimination—
so that it could be taxed more affordably. It sold out
its first printing in one day.
While it certainly builds goodwill with women to fight
the discriminatory tax, the rebellion in advocacy for
women’s hygiene is imperative for The Tampon Book
to fully come to life.
Colleen DeCourcy, Co-President and CCO,
Wieden+Kennedy, warned against borrowing equity
from issues as opposed to wholly owning them as
part of our creative. She advised the industry to be
introspective before taking a stand; ‘Are we giving
back more than we take?’
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9. Everybody In
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Representation drove new dynamics in the makeup of our
stories, especially including differently abled people in their
work, with an emphasis on the needs of these communities
through better, more empathetic and accessible standards,
practices, and storytelling. In turn, these new consumer
experiences are how brands not only tell, but show how our
stories can span the spectrum of ability.
Target refers to this as ‘soul at scale,’ an ethos that considers
customers as muses and mentors, informing marketing and
product development. Cat & Jack is an adaptive apparel
children’s line developed when Target tuned into oft-ignored
needs of special needs children and their families. Something as
simple as removing a zipper, taking out tags, or adding hidden
openings for abdominal access impacts a child’s comfort and
sense of independence. As it turns out, it also impacts their
ability to feel ‘just like any other kid.’ Target CCO Todd
Waterbury sees it as the truest realisation of their ‘design for all’
mission.
Tommy Hilfiger’s line, Tommy Adaptive, takes inclusion a step
further than product development, considering accessible purchase
journeys by partnering to build voice-enabled shopping
experiences. Aira, an assistive service for people who are blind or
have low vision, is also exploring the more human side of artificial
intelligence to advance wearable computing to create the
opportunity for life-changing ‘first-time’ experiences like marathons,
photography, and even driving.
In these examples, accessibility is a creative function that drives
connectivity between the brand, concept, and new (or unaddressed)
consumers.
If your attempt to create work that is diverse stops at race and
culture, you can do more to be truly inclusive. Caroline Wanga,
Target’s Chief Diversity Officer, recommends ‘courageous listening’
and looking for moments of generosity, moments of thoughtfulness,
and moments of empathy to create stories we can all see ourselves
in.
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10. Truth, as a core creative principle, manifested in innumerous ways across
this year’s speakers and award-winning work. Some more literally, applying
journalistic sensibilities to their work. Others looked inward to the truth of
their mission or of their market to reveal narratives both insightful and
instantly recognisable to audiences.
Truth can be a driving creative force. We are in the midst of a global trust
crisis. People don’t trust their governments, mass media, or brands. The lack
of trust is manifesting itself in a call for authenticity, truth in what the
industry is producing. Authenticity was a rallying cry heard all over the Palais,
from the environmental group Extinction Rebellion who urged advertisers to
‘tell the truth’ about climate change, to Burger King’s Marcelo Pascoa’s
comment ‘[consumers] can smell our bullshit.’
It’s no wonder that work focused on people and companies who are willing
to stand up for the truth, and those who are driving journalistic storytelling,
are coming out on top this year. New York Times’ The Truth Is Worth It,
powered by Droga5, documented the intensity and rigour of journalists to
emphasise the investment of discovering (and fact checking and verifying
and discussing how you represent) the truth. The campaign took home the
Grand Prix for Film Craft.
TheImportance
of Truth
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‘I think a brand should be as close as possible to the
audience. If you do this artificial polished stuff, it just gets
between yourself and the consumer. Nobody in the real
world would talk like commercials talk.’
—Stefan Heinrich Henriquez, Global Head of Marketing, TikTok
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11. In these ways, Haribo maintains the truth of
its brand experience by harnessing frivolity
and a kid’s sensibility.
American recording artist Big Sean made an appearance
with Puma to discuss his deep partnership with the
apparel brand, from cultural insights and product
development to ambassador.
Their discussion focused on truth as a matter of personal
identity and cultural relevance. He advised that you
don’t have to be ‘the culture’ when you are being
yourself. Being yourself is the culture. When applied to
telling meaningful stories, it is about being comfortable
being vulnerable—a difficult task for big brands and
agencies because it involves risk.
Oatly helmed a discussion about marketing departments
at the Palais on Monday. The Swedish
On the other hand, truth can be figurative or
intangible—and doesn’t always require seriousness to
be compelling. Haribo and Quiet Storm exemplified this
during its session, How to Unleash Your Inner Child, a
creative philosophy that, in name alone, feels intrinsic to
Haribo as a timeless favourite of kids. Trevor Robinson,
OBE, Creative Director of London-based Quiet Storm,
expressed this as an evergreen consideration—one
inherent to creatives—that can be exercised to develop
more fun, compelling content.
In a featured test commercial during Thursday’s session,
Quiet Storm showcased how this can be done simply—
taking ideas and discussion directly from kids and
portraying it with adults to encourage everyone to
remember what it was like to be a kid.
oat milk was completely transparent with consumers
about the legal hot seat they fell into with the Swedish
dairy lobby, publishing the entire lawsuit against their
‘It’s like milk but made for humans’ campaign in print
and online. Their honesty rallied fans to come to their
rescue, painting them as the David that just might take
down the 200x bigger dairy Goliath. John Schoolcraft,
Creative Director, Oatly Department of Mind
Control, says you get to this kind of work and consumer
loyalty by having a point of view and asking
uncomfortable questions.
Radical truth in all its facets, from authenticity,
vulnerability, and transparency, seems to be what
people want. And, as an industry, we’ll have to deliver if
we want to be at all relevant.
More than ever, I think brands need to tell the truth. I believe that audiences out there have lost faith in
institutions and governments and they’re looking towards brands for guidance. And it’s our responsibility to
guide them, but at the same time it’s a huge business opportunity to occupy that space.
—Chris Garbutt, Global Chief Creative Officer at TBWA Worldwide
in his Thursday session ‘Do the Brave Thing’ on the Palais II stage.
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12. Experience Wins
Capitalize on low hanging fruit
to identify a ballpark
It is harder than ever to truly reach consumers in an impactful way.
Millennials and Gen Z have a penchant for experiences, leading more and
more brands to focus on creating immersive, interactive, and ambient
stories—truly world building—for audiences to experience connectivity with
brands or ideas in new ways.
Tiffany & Co. turned to their history to find unique ways for people to
connect to the brand through the attributes that make Tiffany. The Blue Box
Cafe allows customers to literally have breakfast at Tiffany, a bucket-list
experience at the Flagship Fifth Avenue store in New York City showcasing
Tiffany’s line of fine china and sterling with a three-course breakfast. It is
almost impossible to get a reservation! For the launch of the Paper Flowers
line, Tiffany wrote a ‘love letter to New York,’ with taxi and bodega
takeovers drenched in Tiffany Blue. They were the first luxury brand to
launch on Spotify, creating a rendition of ‘Moon River,’ featuring Elle
Fanning and A$AP Ferg. It brought Tiffany & Co. to life, created passersby
into surprise characters, and developed new, modern touchpoints for these
consumers across digital.
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“Doing is better than saying.”
Fernando Machado, Global Chief Marketing Officer, Burger King
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13. Capitalize on low hanging fruit
to identify a ballpark
At its essence, Burger King’s ‘Whopper Detour’ is a geo-
mobile campaign that incentivises burger lovers with a
coupon, but it’s the outrageousness of how you unlock
the coupon that makes the campaign participatory and
fun. Burger King trolls competitors through their
customers, sharing a laugh with fans. It creates brand
connectivity outside of traditional, transactional habit and
relies on tenants likely core to the Burger King
consumers’ likes—namely, a little bit of fun. Its ‘Traffic
Jam Whopper,’ launched in Mexico City, demonstrates
Burger King’s new delivery offering with a sophisticated
use of open-source technology that allows burger lovers
to order a Whopper while stuck in the worst traffic in the
world, and proves Global Chief Marketing Officer
Fernando Machado’s stance that ‘doing is better than
saying.’
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14. Takeaways
Revisit the Craft of Craft
to Succeed with Tech
New technologies and greater data sets mean our
craft is evolving rapidly. Our craft is digital; it’s
artificial intelligence powering historical figures; it’s
the architecture of immersive experiences; it’s texture
and touchscreens. Where some see merging of big
tech and creative as challenging, we’re seeing
consecutive years of award-winning work that
champion this marriage. To win—brand health,
market performance, work you’re proud of—we need
to revisit craft to help us experiment with this new
depth of capability, with new ways of creating
compelling narratives, and with delivering these
stories in compelling ways. As we move into the next
decade, creatives who only rely on tech as a means
of distribution will leave powerful opportunities
unaddressed.
Brands and organisations must stop looking
at data without an understanding of what’s behind it—
people. In several sessions this week, thought-leaders
espoused a level of intelligence we don’t often exercise
nor reward in our profession, and that’s intuition.
Empathy, leaders argued, is the crux of every great
creative solution. Build this practice by integrating new
qualitative language in your creative review: How did
you react seeing this for the first time? How does it
make you feel? What could make this experience
better? This approach doesn’t mean a brand has to be
serious—empathy and emotional connectivity can be
driven by cheekiness or relevant humour too.
Lead with Intuition
and Empathy
We often think of storytelling in terms of a beginning-
middle-end narrative. This year, we understood how
this paradigm is evolving to experiences—even those
on a nuanced level—to communicate bites to
consumers. Accessible tech and products, diversified
e-commerce experiences, neuroaesthetics, and voice-
activated AI are all proven examples of how brands
and organisations can communicate outside of linear
storytelling. Use concepts of macro-level experience
to help consumers understand who your brand is and
what your values are. Day to day, focus on micro-
storytelling or indications that the brand is listening,
supporting, or building room for consumers to create
their own stories.
Evolve the Narrative
with Experience
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