An opinion piece by LIONS VP, Awards & Insights & Susie Walker.

Marketers are now adapting to the post-pandemic climate, and it’s moving at lightning speed. After two unpredictable years, mired by financial uncertainty, it’s understandable for brands to get side-tracked by short-term metrics, over long-term brand building and results.

As budgets restrict, there is additional pressure for every penny of spend to drive positive value. So, if brands want to convince stakeholders to confidently invest in creativity, now is the time to focus on effectiveness. Brands have to not only make the case, but prove the case, that creativity drives growth, when it is effective.

At LIONS we know, through analysing 69 years of Lion-winning work, that truly effective creative work not only drives bottom-line growth, it changes behaviour and helps to solve the biggest challenges facing our world, over the long-term. Effectiveness goes way beyond views, clicks and impressions.

Creativity and effectiveness must go hand-in-hand for marketers to see consistent results that satisfy the CFO. In the LIONS’ State of Creativity Study 2022 we collated insights from 3,300 people, across the global creative industry. It revealed some fascinating insights.

Convincing stakeholders to invest in creativity was the biggest challenge cited by creative agencies, production and media companies alike: 41% of brands said they were still struggling to convince stakeholders to invest.

The entire industry needs to be able to clearly frame creativity’s value in business. And to help brands build creative confidence, agencies must upskill their talent in key areas: 82% of brands and 78% of creative partners surveyed said that understanding creative effectiveness was very important to upskilling the workforce in 2022. While 86% of creative partners believed it was most important to upskill talent in strategic creative thinking.

Brands and agencies need a shared language and understanding of creative effectiveness for it to thrive. Spotlighting case studies, where creativity has a positive impact on growth, will help to make the case.

Download the latest report here!