Case Study: Cannes Criteria Tightening and Entry Drop
I have covered platforms like this for more than seven years, and 25% fewer entries raised the signal-to-noise of winning work.
For context, see Wikipedia: Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
The useful question is not whether AI shows up in the stack. It already does. The question is who owns taste, safety, and measurement when the platform rewrites the asset.
- Write the hypothesis first
- Capture baselines before launch
- Separate correlation from causality
| Signal | Detail |
|---|---|
| Metric | Before → After / Signal |
| Shopping share | 22.1% → 28.4% |
| DSP Prime Day | 17.9% → 25.5% |
| Title recognition | ~33% knew Ted Lasso source |
In practice, I ask teams to write the refusal list first: which automated edits are unacceptable, which placements are off-limits, and which metrics will kill the test. Without that list, every platform “enhancement” becomes a quiet rewrite of the brief.
Source: Eslogan. Numbers and product claims above come from that reporting; interpretation is mine.