WORLD-CLASS LESSONS ON SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Cannes 2024 Insights

Cannes Lions is a hub of creativity and inspiration, showcasing the best in marketing and advertising worldwide. This year, the highlight was the speech by 90-year-old Mr. Séguéla, whose wisdom, gathered over decades, resonated powerfully with today’s social media era.

In a world where social media is increasingly cluttered—even before the rise of generative AI—standing out has become more challenging than ever. Feeds, forums, and chat rooms are flooded with content, making it difficult for brands to capture attention. The need for fresh, impactful ideas has never been greater.

That’s why we’ve dedicated ourselves to analyzing over 7,000 Cannes Lions-winning social media campaigns from the past 12 years. Our goal is simple: to help marketers generate better ideas that cut through the noise. Whether it’s for always-on content, influencer marketing, community management, or full-scale campaigns, our insights from these award-winning examples provide the inspiration and guidance needed to succeed in the social media landscape.

To achieve that, we have created our Consumer Engagement Framework, which blends academic research on consumer motivation with years of hands-on experience working with top companies across industries.

This framework helps each brand identify a primary role that best connects and engages with people on social media, often supported by one or two additional roles to expand their strategy. A clear and unified brand image is crucial, which is why strong brands can easily find their place within the framework. If a brand seems to fit all seven roles, it’s often a sign that the brand lacks focus.

The identified role(s) guide all social media actions, from strategy to campaign execution, shifting marketing from traditional methods to a more modern approach of openness, dialogue, and engagement.

7 roles - 1 winning strategy

MASTER OF CEREMONY

As a Master of Ceremony, the brand produces content that is meant to entertain and help people pass time. Usually a Master of Ceremony brand has a positive role in its customers everyday life and its job is to bring joy to its users.

SAGE

As a Sage the brand has, produces or distributes information that is in some way exclusive. Usually a Sage brand has a group of followers that are so hungry for the information it provides that they just can’t get enough of it.

MUSE

A Muse brand either inspires, facilitates or provides tools for its followers to follow their own passions and unleash their creative minds. For a brand this means crowdsourcing content or ideas, in other words, getting the followers to contribute their creative talent to the brand’s digital presence.

PITCHMAN

A Pitchman gets its followers over the moon with offerings and competitions or other kind of promotions. Usually a Pitchman has the opportunity to give away something people really want such as trips, or to offer discounts on everyday necessities people feel reluctant paying for, such as gas or toilet paper.

HOST

Host brands have a special power to bring people together. They are brands that represent a topic, a trend, a cause or a shared interest that a group of people have in common. They may also help people be in touch with others or meet new people with same interests.

VOLUNTEER

A Volunteer brand gets its followers to stand up and be active for a shared cause. The cause may be related to the brand’s business, history, environment, role in its community or its mission.

IDOL

An idol brand has what they call “badge value”. It has followers, or fans to be more exact, that are prepared to go to great lengths to show their support for the brand. Followers feel that being seen beside the Idol brand promotes their own personal brand

The Social Framework

The seven roles defined in the Sociability of the Brand framework are the key to successful engagement – they help you define how best to get the attention of your target audience and how to get them join the conversation

But building a thriving brand in the era of social media needs more than that: it needs the four aspects depicted on the inner circle.

Together these five elements make up what we call the Social Brand framework.

PURPOSE

CONNECTION

ACTION

EVIDENCE

SOCIABILITY

"The seven roles defined in the Sociability of the Brand framework are the key to successful engagement – the help you define how best to get the attention of your target audience and how to get them join the conversation. But building a thriving brand in the era of social media needs more than that: it needs the four aspects depicted on the inner circle. Together these five elements make up what we call the Social Brand framework." - Jari Lähdevuori, Co-Founder and Analyst Chief, KURIO

Using the Sociability of the Brand framework, we analysed winning campaigns of Cannes Lions 2024 in order find implications for success in social media marketing. Cannes Lions is the most prestigious festival of marketing and creativity, and thus it offers a one-of-a-kind global set of data for the research.

All in all, 26,753 entries were received. Noteworthy for this whitepaper’s topic is the significant rise in the Social & Influencer Lions entries by 21% – seeing the highest number of entries since the Lion launched in 2018 and making it the biggest category of the festival.

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ABOUT KURIO

We are a social-first creative agency. We deliver results whether it is bigger profits, increased sales, reduced media budgets or globally acknowledged campaigns that move people with insight and creativity. We believe social media has changed the way marketing works – for good. We are operating at the intersection of creative & data, content & media buying – using proprietary tools and frameworks. Business results are always the starting point, but we love to strive for awards too. And we’ve received those from D&AD, WARC Awards for Effectiveness, New York Festivals, Effie and many more. We aim for thought-leadership – publishing various annual whitepapers with partners such as Cannes Lions and thenetworkone. We’ve had the honor of speaking at events like Cannes Lions and tutoring the Young Digital Academies at Eurobest for many years.

Find more about us here: kurio.fi