As we collectively look back on another Cannes Lions, I’d like to look forward to the next. While my previous piece was considered by many to be a scathing criticism, I saw it more as stimulus for debate, how do we get the most out of Cannes?

I firmly believe that awards have a vital role in our industry. It’s clear Cannes once again served up and rewarded great ideas, from Vodafone Red Light to Google Cardboard and beyond. We certainly all got inspired by the new realities of advertising and the great new canvas we operate with. Yet, I think we can do better. The awards ceremony is right, but the methodology is flawed: here are some changes I’d love to see.

Unbundle channels

We’ve neatly created award categories that tally perfectly with the media environment of the 70s with a few new devices thrown in. Today, we’re reading magazines on iPads, listening to Spotify in the car, watching TV on phones and online video on TVs. The best advertising has done a great job of making campaigns that effortlessly straddle these irrelevant lines, yet awards are awarded independently and for just one part of this multifaceted world that works together.

For example at Havas we believe in organic marketing, in putting paid media last. When thinking this way, of course mobile is key, as is using influencers and social media. PR and digital will always be the oxygen for all ideas, so rewarding for one mechanism is nonsensical. If there was such a thing as a PR campaign we’d be asking how it was separate?

It’s 2015 and we’ve categories like Media Lions which make increasingly less sense because at the moment it’s impossible to define what media is. It used to mean real estate that we paid for, but given most media awards are won by great ideas with non-paid media, it seems media is just everything in the world that we can see. I’m not sure this is a particularly tight way to define an award. From Direct Marketing to Cyber and Mobile to PR, we’re using channels that just don’t make sense any more.

Reduce vagueness

Sometimes Cannes seems to be an award for marketing marketing, not the ideas itself, and in these disruptive times the vague rules are there for exploitation. The controversy around Lucky Fish shone a light into the confusion and complexity that comes when people clamber for the spotlight and use rules to their advantage. Is this the creativity we should be rewarding?

The vagueness covers everything from judgement criteria, to involvement required, but above all else, even the media categories that are not media channels seem hopelessly vague. What on earth is an Innovation Lion? Shouldn’t effectiveness be a factor in all Lions, not a separate award? I’ve never met anyone that could adequately explain the Titanium Award (pdf), and what’s the difference between a Product Design Lion (pdf) and Design Lion? Our industry is plagued by things that mean everything, content marketing, native ads, mobile marketing, please can awards at least become tight?

New categories

Times have changed and the skills required are different. I’d love to see Cannes reward the following.

Best team

Advertising is now a dance of specialisms working together and it’s hard. We speak different languages, have different skill-sets, we fight, when it all comes together it’s amazing. Cannes should be about what everyone can accomplish together, to reward specific people in any campaign seems criminal. Our focus should be on the best pan-agency team and I’d love to see 30 people on stage, across various departments celebrating as one.

Biggest failure

Failure is expensive, painful and humbling. I worry that Silicon Valley thinking celebrates failure too much, but unless we fail we never make progress. Teams that have tried to do spectacular things, have learned a ton, should be celebrated more than everyone else in the world who didn’t try anything new.

Performance marketing

In place of a series of Lions born from another age such as Promo and Activation and Direct Marketing, lets celebrate the under-valued skills of converting interest into sales, by introducing a new Lion to celebrate performance marketing. Here data and conversion, attribution and real-time marketing would be brought to life and given the stage these skills deserve.

Product design

As agencies seek to travel upstream and effect the product more, we should find a way to reward creative thinkers who make something physical, some aspect of hardware or product that can be felt and touched. From line extensions to new products, we should reward this alone. While we currently have awards with this name, they seem to reflect a variety of campaigns, many of which involved no actual product design.

Experience design

The intangible version of a product, this could be the design of websites, an app, a new service offering or even the feeling of flying an airline across all touchpoints. This is beyond user interface (UI), this is everything a customer may feel with a brand, I’d love to see the creativity of improving experiences rewarded.

Best business solution

Increasingly, I believe the future of our industry lies in helping businesses beyond communication or even marketing problems, but in more profound business solutions. Our clients may worry about the threats of Uber, disintermediation, tax law, deregulation, and digital disruption, so our solutions to more profound business problems should get their time on stage.

New location

For an industry rooted in creativity, Cannes as a place feels mightily stale. It’s not just the pastiche 70s architecture and dubious gold furnishings, it’s the conversations, the Gutter Bar, it’s all both legendary and completely uninspiring,

Adjacent experts

I’m not sure why ad people love the famous over the talented. Why not bring in world-class behavioural scientists, anthropologists, historians, police detectives, in greater numbers than the stars of social networks? Cannes planning seems cynical, get the headlines for flying in a Kardashian or a YouTube star, but what can we really learn from such people? We’d have fewer selfies but learn more from people who challenge our perceptions.

These are some ideas. Awards are needed, but let’s ensure the best rise to the top and we better ourselves as an industry. Let’s make the work shine, not the personalities. Let’s celebrate people who drive the industry forward, not those who know people in the right circles. Let’s be bold, ambitious, challenge ourselves, not focus on merchandising the formulaic. Our industry is in the throes of the most exciting challenges we’ve ever know, it’s the best time ever to work in advertising, let’s make it feel that way.

Tom Goodwin is the senior vice president of strategy and innovation for Havas Media US

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