The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is adding a new Creative B2B Lion for 2022, reflecting the growth of creativity in business-to-business marketing.

The Creative B2B Lion will reward “game-changing creativity and effectiveness in work for products and services that are purchased by professionals on behalf of businesses,” Cannes Lions announced. It falls under the Engagement track in the Cannes Lions categories and will have its own Grand Prix. 

According to Susie Walker, Cannes Lions VP of awards and insight, its creation comes after a “huge increase” in creative B2B work during the pandemic, plus the fact that two B2B campaigns won Grand Prix at Cannes this year.

LinkedIn’s Raising Profiles, in which the platform partnered with homeless vendors of “The Big Issue” magazine to give them their own profiles, won a Creative eCommerce Grand Prix, and Anheuser-Busch InBev's "Tienda Cerca," a delivery service designed to help local shops in Latin America, won a second Grand Prix in the category. 

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Other award-winning B2B campaigns in recent years have included campaigns for the likes of Shutterstock, Getty Images and Squarespace, as well as industry-focused films such as Apple’s “Appocalypse” from 2017, which kicked off Apple’s annual WWDC conference, and Volvo Trucks’ “Epic Split,” the 2015 Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix winner. 

“It is reflective of how the industry is evolving,” Walker told Ad Age. “We have been hearing from agencies and consultancies how the B2B market is having a real boom, and there is some really incredible work being made.”

The Creative B2B Lion is backed by the B2B Institute, a research think tank supported by LinkedIn.

Cannes Lions Chairman Philip Thomas added that the new Lion had been “several years in the making.”

“We first started discussing a Lion that recognizes B2B work way back in 2013, but we always try to get the timing right, so that our awards are reflective of the industry and in line with its needs,” he said. 

The award is the only new Lion for next year, although Cannes Lions is also renaming its Creative e-Commerce Lions as simply “Creative Commerce." The name tweak is designed to "broaden" the category to reflect the different emerging areas of commerce, according to Simon Cook, managing director at Cannes Lions.

“There was a noticeable shift across the work this year; commerce related entries were up 18%, and our juries identified emerging trends around ‘distributed commerce’, ‘equitable commerce’, and the proliferation of commerce more generally,” Cook said in a statement. “Evolving the Commerce Lion is about keeping it relevant and in line with a rapidly shifting landscape.”

Cannes Lions also announced that Beth Ann Kaminkow, global CEO of VLMY&R Commerce and CEO of VMLY&R New York, will be president of the Creative Commerce Lions jury next year.

The announcements follow Cannes Lions' confirmation earlier this month that it plans to hold an in-person Festival in Cannes, with some hybrid elements, June 20-24, 2022. Entries for Cannes Lions open on Jan. 20, 2022.

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