3 lessons for tech and telecom marketers
from the industry’s winners at Cannes

Despite advice from engineers to just stick to the speeds and feeds, technology and telecom marketers have a proud record of creative accomplishment – and shelves full of Gold Lions to prove it. This year’s Cannes was no exception, providing marketers in the semiconductor fields with some valuable creative lessons.

1. Walk the talk
Technology brands are famous for leading with their vision, and following up with real actions later, if ever. So it was especially impressive to see Philips genuinely live up to its commitment to sustainability with Refurb, which won the festival’s Grand Prix for Business Transformation.

After alerting consumers to the fact that 10 million returned holiday gifts end up in landfills each year, Philips completely flipped their model, leading with refurbished products throughout their e-commerce business.

Microsoft also walked the talk – in gaming – partnering with the UK’s Bromley FC to give Xbox Football Manager gaming enthusiasts an opportunity to turn a hobby into a profession. And, true to its word, the soccer club actually hired one high-ranking game player as its Everyday Tactician, leading to its best season since 1892 and record engagement with Microsoft’s game. The initiative took home both the Grand Prix for Gaming Entertainment and a Titanium, one of only four awarded by the festival.

2. Disrupt perceptions
Possibly the buzziest campaign going into Cannes was WoMen Football, dropped by French telecom leader Orange in advance of the 2023 Women’s World Cup.

Women athletes don’t get the same respect – or viewership – that their male peers do. To rectify that, Orange showcased a compilation of over-the-top plays by France’s male soccer stars – only the plays were actually made by the French women’s team. Orange had digitally substituted partial images of male players into the women’s highlight reel to create the illusion. When Orange revealed the ruse, they also revealed our biases.

3. Elevate the torture test
Demos are the bread-and-butter of technology product marketing. But there can be a sameness to them, even when taking a page from the CPG handbook with a “torture test” of the product in extreme conditions.

WhatsApp, this year’s winner of the Grand Prix in Creative Strategy, seriously upped the ante on demos with a high-stakes, real-world case centered around a riveting human story – think of it as Torture Test 2.0. In a 30-minute Amazon Prime film, We are Ayenda, WhatsApp takes us into the lives of Afghan women’s soccer team members. At great risk after the Taliban swept into Kabul, their escape to safety was propelled by their exclusive use of encrypted WhatsApp messages.

Verizon also featured a torture test – of its own network – with its Gold Lion winner Can’t ‘B’ Broken. When Beyonce dropped two tracks from her new country album live on the Super Bowl in a Verizon spot, she broke the Internet – but not the Verizon network.

And the Lion goes to Apple… again
One final shout out to Apple, which showed it’s still at the top of the tech marketing game by winning Lions for 15 different initiatives – including two of our favorites: Fuzzy Feelings, the iPhone-animated Christmas story, and Tractor, the most original way we’ve ever seen to spotlight your product’s battery life. Did someone say, “Think different?”