Cannes as Wake-up Call for Africa

Raheem Akingbolu who monitored the 2024 edition of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, reckons that it was not entirely a bad outing for Africa and Nigeria in particular, considering their representations in the jury, shortlisted works and other activities

Every year, players in the creative industry look forward to mid-year when they would converge in millions on the French Riviera, for the annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Though the primary reason for the 71 year-old annual gathering was to reward excellence and creativity in campaigns, its achievement has since gone beyond that. As a gathering of practitioners all over the world, the five-day event is always a training center for learning, unlearning and networking. 

Until recently when some African agencies, especially from South-Africa, Kenya and a few countries started giving globally recognised advertising networks a run for their money, winning in the competition had always been tough for participating agencies of African descent. Last year, Nigeria had its major break, when X3M Ideas won at the global competition and clinched Bronze Lions in the highly competitive Health & Wellness category. The agency’s winning campaign, titled “The Soot Life Expectancy,” was said to have resonated well with targeted audiences as well as addressing pressing social issues.

The Making of African Jurors

Beyond winning laurels at the competition, African practitioners have, in the last few years, consistently been appointed as Jurors at the award.  For example, six years ago, the Managing Director and Chief Creative Officer of Noah’s Ark Communications Limited, Lanre Adisa, was in the news when he was named a member of the Cannes Lions jury. Since then, the roll-call of juries and entries from Africa have been on the increase. 

After Adisa, creative eggheads from South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and others have made incredible marks in this regard. For instance, this year, a South African, Andisa Ntsubane, the Managing Executive: Brand, Marketing and Communications for Vodacom Group Limited, was made the President of the Jury. He has been prominently featured as the President of the Creative B2B section and this is a big plus to Africa. Also, Nigeria’s Steve Babaeko, chief executive officer of X3M Ideas, and Kenya’s Emuron Alemu, the chief creative officer of The Quollective, were both on the board this year and they made the continent of Africa proud. Worthy of mention too was the activities of Osas Ukhurebor’s Black at Cannes, a body that was conceptualised to “foster a vibrant community of black executives, with the overarching goal of amplifying representation and expanding prospects on the grandest stage of advertising, media, and technology.” It is to the glory of Africa that this organisation put up many seminars at Cannes.

In a way, as acknowledged by the CEO of Lions, Simon Cook, there was a semblance of balance and global representation in the jury.  “We’re delighted to have a balance and breadth of expertise and global representation across our Juries. The Awarding Juries represent the global industry’s leading talent from a diverse range of disciplines, and we welcome the unique perspectives they bring. We thank them for their time, dedication, and care in setting the global creative benchmark for our industry.” Cook had stated.

Meanwhile, a report and record from the 2024 edition also showed that the event recorded the highest-ever representation from the Middle East and Africa this year. As captured by the Global Director of Awards, Lions, Marian Brannelly, there was representation from four new markets this year – Armenia, Ghana, Pakistan, and Panama.

Low Attendance, Quality Representation

Compared to recent years and the need for Nigeria to build on existing height, the record of attendance confirmed that the country’s contingents were low.  But despite this, Nigerian agencies made a strong statement with the number of their shortlisted works.

For instance, Media Reach OMD (The Young Lions) made it to the shortlisted but didn’t win. In a similar development, Nigeria’s leading agency, X3M Ideas and its subsidiary in southern Africa, X3M Ideas Zambia were both shortlisted for the Act Responsible Awards at the competition. They didn’t win either. The ACT Responsible Hall at Cannes serves as a dynamic hub for championing sustainability within the creative advertising industry, globally. Meanwhile, the agency won two last year for Act for Goods aside from the lion’s trophy it clinched. Another firm from Nigeria, MediaFuse-Dentsu also entered but it didn’t make the shortlist. In all, no African agency won lions this year but a South African agency got one shortlist.

Diversity, Equality and Inclusion

Another take-home from the global event was the clarion call on the global advertising community to “Stay the course on diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) and sustainability,” in the years ahead to deepen international practice, research and collaboration.

Five top practitioners, drawn from various continents of the world, including Nigeria’s Babaeko, who lead conversation at the International Council for Advertising Self-Regulation (ICAS) session on diversity, equality and inclusion in Advertising, unanimously agreed on this and promised to increase their efforts to drive progress together with members and stakeholders to enhance effective collaboration closely with the Unstereotype Alliance.

The speakers, who shared their thoughts based on experiences and backgrounds, gave analytical and thought provoking scenarios that were meant to shape and deepen knowledge of participants on issues related to diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI).

The session, hosted by the International Council for Advertising Self-Regulation (ICAS), featured new research exposing problematic stereotyping in global ads along with perspectives from industry leaders on driving meaningful change. Madeline Di Nonno, President and CEO of the Geena Davis Institute, presented sobering findings from their latest research analyzing representation in advertisements across the world, to set the stage for what would become an interactive and important discussion on concrete actions for achieving meaningful DEI progress in advertising.

Representing Africa on the panel and speaking to pertinent issues, Babaeko, described the session as an evaluating forum that was initiated to sustain the relationship among practitioners, regardless of where he or she was practising from.

Other panelists who lent their voices to the focus of the session include President of the International Council for Advertising Self-Regulation (ICAS) & Chief Executive of the Advertising Standards Authority, Guy Parker; Senior Product Manager at Google, Komal Singh; Director of Brands and Impact, Union des marques, Sophie Roosen and President and CEO of Geena Davis Institute, Madeline Di Nonno.

Reacting to the relevance of the session to the year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the CEO of WFA and Vice President of ICAS Stephan Loerke, commended the speakers on their positions.

He said: “The industry could not agree more and were delighted to have a discussion in Cannes with a diverse set of experts on the current state of diversity, equity and inclusion in advertising, addressing the biggest problems, looking at progress made and discussing the role of technology.”