How to be a Lion in B2B and technology marketing

3 lessons from the winners at Cannes
Looking for ideas that roar? Then you might want to check out the sometimes under-appreciated B2B and technology sectors.

As this year’s Cannes showed, marketers in these industries are doing so much more than reciting facts (and figures) and coloring within the lines. They’re producing truly stand-out creative that holds essential lessons for marketers everywhere.

1. Give to get
In the B2B and tech worlds, it’s a tried-and-true technique to give something away to get something in return. For example, you might provide open source software or contribute to technology standards to increase the likelihood of market acceptance.

Typically, these initiatives rely on word-of-mouth. But Renault’s un.patent initiative took a different tack, revving up a marketing campaign about its mission to share tech to improve electrical vehicle safety.

With safety concerns holding back the whole EV market (and progress toward a more sustainable planet), Renault did more than just seek out its competition – it partnered with the United Nations! The goal? Make all its EV safety IP freely available, including a patent enabling EV battery fires to be put out in minutes, not hours. For all it gave, Renault got back a Gold Lion in Creative B2B.

2. Disguise the demo
Product demos tend to work best when viewers are blissfully unaware they’re watching one. Of course, that only happens if you have a very engaging narrative, which GoDaddy did for the launch of its new AI tool Airo on Super Bowl Sunday.

To show budding entrepreneurs they could start a business from scratch with Airo, GoDaddy built a campaign around Walton Goggins of White Lotus fame. With Airo doing the heavy lifting of building and promoting an e-commerce site for Walton Goggins Goggle Glasses (a real product!), Goggins is free to do what actors do best – i.e., pretend he knows how to do something. Not only are sales of the goggles going gangbusters, GoDaddy doubled traffic to its own site and won the Grand Prix for Creative B2B.

Another great example of disguising the demo is Apple’s fun Star Wars-themed spot for the iPhone’s precision finding feature. In this Gold Lion winner, our hero must locate his mates in a convention hall of cosplayers dressed as Mandalorians and more. As you might have guessed, the force is with him. It was also with Apple, which was named Creative Marketer of the Year and took home another Gold for its AirPods Hearing Aid campaign and two Creative Effectiveness nods for its Shot on iPhone campaign.

3. Let the audience complete the story
While this tactic goes against the grain in B2B, where the default is to spell everything out, it can be powerful. Just look at last year’s Titanium-winning Meet Marina Prieto campaign – a mysterious subway takeover that charmed Madrid with Instagram posts from a 100-year-old, garnering media attention and demonstrating the potency of OOH.

This year, the same client, outdoor advertising provider JCDecaux, delivered again. In the wake of horrific floods in Valencia, they created another takeover, turning ad space into “storefronts” for street-level businesses that were wiped out. In addition to giving these businesses much needed visibility, the ads invited subway riders into their stories and encouraged crowdfunding donations – all of which earned Still Open a well-deserved Gold Lion for Creative B2B.

A bonus lesson for B2B and technology marketers
If there’s one final takeaway to be gleaned from these Lion recipients, it’s the power of doing something different, of breaking from the pack. It’s a lesson many B2B and technology marketers seem to be taking to heart.