We spoke to Anna Lungley, Chief Sustainability Officer, dentsu, about what she's looking for from work as a juror for the Sustainable Development Goals category at Cannes Lions Live 2021.
What are you looking for from winning work?
We're looking for bold, fresh ideas that have the potential to scale, to transform business models and deliver shared value to business and society.
The ability to scale is really important. The projects we were looking at don’t need to be big today but we are looking for ideas that we could potentially replicate and scale in other industries and other geographies.
The point about shared value is really important as well. To be truly sustainable, these ideas need to be able to drive business growth as well as positive impact for society and the environment. It’s the only way they really will become sustainable, so that was really key to us.
What are the main themes coming through in the work that you’ve seen?
We're judging two years’ worth of work, so it’s been really interesting to see how the entries reflect the news agenda at the time.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, we saw in some SDGs an abundance of work, but they were all trying to address the same issue and we saw some quite similar themes coming up.
But in other SDGs, there was a real dearth of good work, and that’s a real opportunity. We’d love to have seen more in categories that feel really obvious for brands in this industry to affect change, like sustainable consumption and production and climate change.
There is a huge opportunity for this industry to drive the way that we operate, the way that we live, that we work so we can think much more broadly about the SDG agenda.
Some of the strongest ideas and the most exciting ideas came from combining creativity with cutting-edge technology, data and insights, with some eye-opening and really impressive results and those were really exciting to see.
What are your hopes for the future of Cannes Lions?
Cannes is a hotspot for innovation and creativity and the winning work drives and inspires creatives the world over. It’s also a focal point for education and a place where we can have some really challenging conversations.
It’s my hope that everything we showcase will make people think differently about the opportunity that we have and the role our industry can play.
We can raise awareness, we can change behaviour, we can influence people everywhere to make better, more sustainable choices. And we can also transform whole business models and sectors, driving growth, whilst simultaneously driving positive change for society and the environment.
I’d love to see Cannes as a platform really driving this conversation forward and making us the best that we can be because I really believe this is an industry that can change the world for the better.